Baudrillard, Jean 1929-

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Baudrillard, Jean 1929-

PERSONAL:

Born July 29, 1929, in Reims, France. Education: University of Paris, Ph.D., 1966.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Media and Communications, The European Graduate School, 158 E. 7th St. C 5, New York, NY 10009.

CAREER:

Sociologist, literary critic, educator, and writer. High school German teacher, 1950s; University of Paris, Nanterre, France, teaching assistant, assistant professor, then professor, 1966-1987; IRIS (Institut de Recherche et d'Information Socio-Économique) at the Universite de Paris-IX Dauphine, Paris, France, scientific director, 1990.

WRITINGS:

(With Bertolt Brecht and Gilbert Badia) Dialogues d'exiles (Fluchtlingsgesprache), L'Arche (Paris, France), 1956.

(Editor) Rene Burri, Les Allemands, Delpire (Paris, France), 1963.

(Translator) Peter Weiss, La persecution et l'assassinat de Jean-Paul Marat representes par le groupe theatral de l'hospice de Charenton sous la direction de Monsieur de Sade, Seuil (Paris, France), 1965, L'Arche (Paris, France), 2000.

Le systeme des objets, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1968, 1998, translation by James Benedict published as The System of Objects, Verso (New York, NY), 1996.

(Translator) Peter Weiss, Discours sur la genese et le deroulement de la tres longue guerre de liberation du Vietnam: illustrant la necessite de la lutte armee des opprimes contre leurs oppresseurs ainsique la volonte des Etats-Unis d'Amerique d'aneantire les fondements de la revolution, Seuil (Paris, France), 1968.

La societe des consommation: ses mythes, ses structures, Calmann-Levy (Paris, France), 1969, Denoel (Paris, France), 1998, translation published as The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures, Sage (London, England), 1998.

Pour une critique de l'economie politique du signe, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1972, reprinted, 1990, translation by Charles Levin published as For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, Telos Press (St. Louis, MO), 1981.

Le miroir de la production, ou, L'illusion critique du materialisme historique, Caterman (Tournai, France), 1973, reprinted, 1994, translation by Mark Poster published as The Mirror of Production, Telos Press (St. Louis, MO), 1975.

L'echange symbolique et la mort, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1976, reprinted, 1998, translation by Iain Hamilton Grant published as Symbolic Exchange and Death, Thousand Oaks (London, England), 1993.

Oublier Foucault, Editions Galilee (Paris, France), 1977, translation by Nicole Dufresne published as Forget Foucault, Semiotext(e) (New York, NY), 1987.

L'effet Beaubourg: implosion et dissuasion, Editions Galilee (Paris, France), 1977.

L'Ange de stuc, Editions Galilee (Paris, France), 1978.

A l'ombre des majorites silencieuses, ou, La fin du social, Imprimerie Quotidienne (Fontenay-sous-bois, France), 1978, translation by Paul Foss, et al, published as In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities, or, the End of the Social, and Other Essays, Semiotext(e) (New York, NY), 1983.

Le P.C., ou, Les paradis artificiels du politique, (Fontenay-sous-bois, France), 1978.

De la seduction, Galilee (Paris, France), 1979, reprinted, 1997, translation by Brian Singer published as Seduction, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1990.

Simulacres et simulation, Galilee (Paris, France), 1981, reprinted, 1995, translation by Paul Foss, et al, published as Simulations, Semiotext(e) (New York, NY), 1983.

Les stategies fatales, Grasset (Paris, France), 1983, translation by Philip Beitchman and W.G.J. Niesluchowski published as Fatal Strategies, Semiotext(e) (New York, NY), 1990.

(With Sophie Calle) Suite venitienne, l'Etoile (Paris, France), 1983, translation by Dany Barash and Danny Hatfield published as Suite venitienne, Bay Press (Seattle, WA), 1988.

La gauche divine: chronique des annees 1977-1984, Grasset (Paris, France), 1985.

Amerique, Grasset (Paris, France), 1986, Descartes (Paris, France), 2000, translation by Chris Turner published as America, Verso (New York, NY), 1988.

(With Jacques Zylberberg) Masses et postmodernite, Pressses de l'Universite Laval (Quebec City, Quebec, Canada), 1986.

The Evil Demon of Images, Power Institute of Fine Arts (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), 1986.

(Translator) Peter Weiss, L'Instruction: oratorio en onze chants, Seuil (Paris, France), 1986, L'Arche (Paris, France), 2000.

Cool Memories, 1980-1985, Galilee (Paris, France), 1987, translation by Chris Turner published as Cool Memories, Verso (New York, NY), 1990.

L'autre par lui-meme: habilitation, Galilee (Paris, France), 1987, translation by Bernard and Caroline Schutze published as The Ecstasy of Communication, Autonomedia (Brooklyn, NY), 1988.

Selected Writings, edited by Mark Poster, Polity (Cambridge, England), 1988.

Xerox and Infinity, Touchepas (London, England), 1988.

(With Mick Carter) The Revenge of the Crystal: A Baudrillard reader, Pluto (London, England), 1989.

Cool Memories II, 1987-1990, Galilee (Paris, France), 1990, translation by Chris Turner published as Cool Memories II, 1987-1990, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 1996.

La transparence du mal: essai sur les phenomenes extremes, Galilee (Paris, France), 1990, translation by James Benedict published as The Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena, Verso (New York, NY), 1993.

The Revenge of the Crystal: Selected Writings on the Modern Object and Its Destiny, 1968-1983, edited and translated by Paul Foss and Julian Pefanis, Power Institute of Fine Arts (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), 1990.

Olivier Mosset, Bundesamt fur Kultur (Bern, Switzerland), 1990.

(With Toyoko Yamada) Nippon, Riburopoto (Tokyo, Japan), 1990.

Citoyennete et urbanite, Esprit (Paris, France), 1991.

La guerre du Golfe n'a pas eu lieu, Galilee (Paris, France), 1991, translation by Paul Patton published as The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1995.

L'illusion de la fin, ou, La greve des evenements, Galilee (Paris, France), 1992, translation by Chris Turner published as The Illusion of the End, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1994.

(With Marc Guillaume) Figures de l'alterite, Descartes (Paris, France), 1992.

Baudrillard Live: Selected Interviews, edited by Mike Gane, Routledge (New York, NY), 1993.

La pensee radicale, Sens & Tonka (Paris, France), 1994.

(With Michel Dion) Madonna, erotisme et pouvoir, Kime (Paris, France), 1994.

The Art of Disappearance, Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia), 1994.

Le crime parfait, Galilee (Paris, France), 1995, translation by Chris Turner published as The Perfect Crime, Verso (New York, NY), 1996.

Fragments: Cool Memories III, 1990-1995, Galilee (Paris, France), 1995, translation by Emily Agar, Verso (New York, NY), 1997.

Illusion, desillusion esthetiques, Sens & Tonka (Paris, France), 1997.

Le paroxyste indifferent: entretiens avec Philippe Petit, Grasset (Paris, France), 1997, translation by Chris Turner published as Paroxysm: Interviews with Philippe Petit, Verso (New York, NY), 1998.

Ecran total, Galilee (Paris, France), 1997, translation by Chris Turner published as Total Screen, Verso (London, England), 2002.

(With Nicholas Zurbrugg) Jean Baudrillard: art et artefact, Sage Publications (London, England), 1997.

De l'exorcisme en politique ou la conjuration des imbeciles, Sens & Tonka (Paris, France), 1997.

(With Marc Auge) Diana Crash, Descartes (Paris, France), 1998.

Car l'illusion ne s'oppose pas à la realite, Descartes (Paris, France), 1998.

A l'ombre du millenaire, ou, Le suspens de l'an 2000, Sens & Tonka (Paris, France), 1998.

(Contributor) Luc Delahay, L'autre, Phaidon (London, England), 1999.

L'echange impossible, Galilee (Paris, France), 1999, translation by Chris Turner published as Impossible Exchange, Verso (New York, NY), 2001.

D'un millenaire a l'autre, Michel (Paris, France), 1999.

Crise et critique de la sociologie, Hazan (Paris, France), 1999.

(With Jean Nouvel) Les objets singuliers: architecture et philosophie, Calmann-Levy (Paris, France), 2000, translation by Robert Bononno published as The Singular Objects of Architecture, foreword by K. Michael Hays, University of Minnesota Press (Minneapolis, MN), 2002.

Mots de passe, Pauvert (Paris, France), 2000, translation by Chris Turner published as Passwords, Verso (New York, NY), 2003.

The Vital Illusion, edited by Julia Witwer, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

Cool Memories IV, 1995-2000, Galilee (Paris, France), 2000.

The Uncollected Baudrillard, edited by Gary Genosko, Sage (London, England), 2001.

Le ludique et le policier: et autres textes parus dans Utopie, 1967/78, Sens & Tonka (Paris, France), 2001.

Selected Writings (new edition), edited by Mark Poster, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 2001.

Telemorphose: precede de l'elevage de poussiere, Sens & Tonka (Paris, France), 2001.

(With Francois L'Yvonnet) D'un fragment l'autre, Michel (Paris, France), 2001, translation by Chris Turner published as Fragments: Conversations with Francois L'Yvonnet, Routledge (New York, NY), 2004.

L'esprit du terrorisme (also see below), Galilee (Paris, France), 2001.

Pataphysique, Sens & Tonka (Paris, France), 2002.

Power Inferno, Galilee (Paris, France), 2002.

Screened Out, translated by Chris Turner, Verso (New York, NY), 2002.

The Spirit of Terrorism; and, Requiem for the Twin Towers, translated by Chris Turner, Verso (New York, NY), 2002, also published as The Spirit of Terrorism; and, Other Essays, 2003.

Mass, Identity, Architecture: Architectural Writings of Jean Baudrillard, edited by Francesco Proto, foreword by Mike Gane, Wiley Academy (Chichester, West Sussex, England), 2003.

La violence du monde (title means "The Violence of the World"), Institut du monde arabe (Paris, France), 2003.

(With Louise Merzeau) Au jour le jour, Descartes (Paris, France), 2004.

A propos d'Utopie, Sens & Tonka (Paris, France), 2005.

The Conspiracy of Art: Manifestos, Interviews, Essays, edited by Sylvere Lotringer, translated by Amy Hodges, Semiotext(e) (New York, NY), 2005.

(With Enrique Valiente Noailles) Les exiles du dialogue, Galilee (Paris, France), 2005.

The Intelligence of Evil, or, The Lucidity Pact, translated by Chris Turner, Berg (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to Jean Revol: peintures, dessins, Feudon- Bearn (Paris, France), 1981; Enrico Baj: transparence du kitsch, Editions de la Difference (Paris, France), 1990; Andy Warhol: Silkscreens from the Sixties, Schirmer/Mosel (Munich, Germany), 1990; Des mondes inventes: les parcs a theme, Villette (Paris, France), 1992; Les sciences de la prevision, Seuil (Paris, France), 1996; Entrevues a propos du complot de l'art, Sens & Tonka (Paris, France), 1997.

SIDELIGHTS:

Social theorist and literary critic Jean Baudrillard has been one of the preeminent voices analyzing late-twentieth-century Western culture. Called by some the quintessential postmodernist, he has suggested that the media shapes all the reality that modern people experience. Since the publication of his books on the United States in the mid-1980s, he has been a fashionable figure among the intelligentsia in both America and Europe; he has been especially prominent in modern art circles. Critics either find him brilliant or silly, but his work always generates a response.

Baudrillard's grandparents were peasants, and his parents were ordinary working people in the industrial city of Reims. Baudrillard was a good student. After graduating from his local high school in 1947, he went to Paris for a year of university preparation at the Lycee Henri IV. He left this school briefly, as part of a rebellion against his culture and all the expectations placed on him, but then returned because he decided he should attend university after all. Over the next several years, he taught German, translated the work of Bertolt Brecht and Peter Weiss, and began writing literary essays. He also went to the University of Paris, where he studied sociology. He graduated in 1966 and began teaching at the university's branch in the Parisian suburb Nanterre. Though he was not particularly involved in politics, his beliefs fell to the extreme left, and he was enthusiastic about the efforts of French students and workers to topple the government in 1968.

Baudrillard's early works showed a definite Marxist leaning; he was influenced both by French intellectuals such as Roland Barthes and Henri Lefebvre, and of German members of the Frankfurt school, including Herbert Marcuse and Walter Benjamin. Like these theorists, Baudrillard wanted to develop a new way of understanding contemporary culture. In the Marxist Le systeme des objets, he suggests that in modern western societies, goods shape the needs they fulfill, and that though people are constantly driven to acquire more things, these goods do not bring them satisfaction. Baudrillard continued to explore this theme in La societe des consommation: ses mythes, ses structures, adding semiotic theory to his analysis. Semiotic theory became the topic of his third book, Pour une critique de l'economie politique du signe, in which he criticizes the theory's principle that the relationship between a word and thing it represents is arbitrary. He argues that, instead, the sign itself is part of a system with its own power, and that complete revolution is the only thing that can restore the symbolic back to the sign.

Baudrillard moved away from Marxism with his next book, Le miroir de la production. Here he argues that Marx's ideas worked best with nineteenth-century capitalism and they were no longer useful for twentieth-century society. In the pessimistic L'exchange symbolique et la mort, Baudrillard attempts to describe contemporary society as distinct from earlier ones by using a "genealogy of death." He suggests that for modern society, death has become an abnormal state, something to be abolished, but these efforts to ban death have in fact spread death everywhere. He creates his own vocabulary and unique system of logic using some of the structuralist principles posited by Levi-Strauss, and states his ideas through grand generalizations.

In 1977's L'effet Beaubourg: implosion et dissuasion, Baudrillard discusses the impact of the controversial Centre Pompidou on Parisian society. In Oublier Foucault, he suggests that Michel Foucault was in fact reactionary rather than a leftist. That same year he published L'Ange de stuc, a collection of poetry, and Le P.C., ou, Les paradis artificiels du politique, a study of the French Communist party. De la seduction is a critique of modernist theories such as Marxism and psychoanalysis and their assumption that the unconscious and economic systems create reality. Baudrillard argues that, instead, appearances shape the reality of objects, in a process of seduction. He suggests that feminism tries to make visible what should be unstated; he attacks pornography for the same reason. He writes that it must be marvelous to be a woman, "to live in bodies so beautiful, so ingenuous, and allow the men to dominate you with all their ugliness, wealth, and pretensions." His discussion of women and the women's movement drew a great deal of criticism from feminists, who believed that he found feminism stupid.

In 1980 Baudrillard began to travel, intending to extend his theories to the world beyond Europe. He spent a long time in the United States, which he considered the ultimate postmodern culture. In Simulacres et simulation, Baudrillard continues to explore theories of reality by looking at simulated environments; he suggests that perhaps Disneyland is the real United States and the rest of the country is all an invention, and that hijackings and other violent crimes only become real when the media presents them to viewers. In Amerique, he describes his impressions of the nation, fascinated at the obsession with fast food, cars, and suburbs that form the center of American culture. He calls the U.S. "the primitive society of the future, society of complexity, hybridity, and the greatest intermingling, of a ritualism that is ferocious but whose superficial diversity lends it beauty." He has said that he finds American culture much more alive than that of France. He finds the "astral" America that he seeks most of all in the desert, which he claims is the heart of the country.

Baudrillard left his position at the University of Paris in 1987, claiming that it had kept him in a state of inertia. That year he published Cool Memories, 1980-1985, a freeform collection of snapshot-style essays on modern culture, especially that of America. He wrote three sequels to it, each one a "journal" of a three-or five-year period. Around the same time, he published his Selected Writings, a collection of his essays on hyperreality (the unconscious blurring of fantasy and reality) translated into English. Amerique and Cool Memories made Baudrillard into a celebrity in certain circles, particularly in contemporary American art; when he appeared at the Whitney Museum in New York in 1987, his fans turned out in droves to see him. His work became very fashionable among the intelligentsia in the late 1980s and 1990s, and publishers rushed to produce translations of many of his early writings. Scholars of sociology, political science, and art began to write a plethora of articles for academic journals in which they critiqued his criticism. Critics either found his work brilliant or perplexing; it was always controversial.

This controversy increased in the early 1990s, when Baudrillard published several works about the Persian Gulf War and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in which he suggests that the mass media created the reality of those events. La guerre du Golfe n'a pas eu lieu offended many readers with its thesis that the Gulf War was in fact a carefully scripted media production; Baudrillard suggested that the whole conflict was designed for television, filmed and censored and full of ritualized spectacle. Those who died were in fact extras, sacrificed for the show. The U.S. military dictated what viewers would see, an image of cultural supremacy and bloodless conquest. L'illusion de la fin discusses history as it is read by a postmodern world, suggesting that history either progresses in a cycle, or in fact has gone into reverse gear and is backing up. The past disappears as soon as it has happened: everyone forgot communism after it fell, and the Gulf War ceased to exist just one year after its end.

In La transparence du mal: essai sur les phenomenes extremes, Baudrillard looks at the AIDS epidemic as a media-driven crisis and attack on the "Other." He laments that the struggles people shared in the 1960s, for liberation, art, democracy, the end of poverty, have all been abandoned, and all that is left is death and destruction as portrayed by the media. Figures de l'alterite is a collection of essays on "alterite radicale," an extreme form of otherness. Baudrillard argues that modern society has eradicated this level of difference, which now prevents the "Self" from replenishing itself through comparison with a truly different individual. Baudrillard Live: Selected Interviews is a collection of twenty-one interviews done between 1982 and 1991. In them, Baudrillard explains his postmodern theories, his refusal to compromise with tradition, and his contention that inherent meaning and value do not exist. In Le crime parfait, Baudrillard suggests that the murder of reality is a perfect crime, without perpetrator or victim, weapon or motive. The image has become more real than reality. The only weapons against this trend are excess and irony; pop star Madonna is excellent at using these things, and Baudrillard holds her up as an icon of the times. In Le paroxyste indifferent: entretiens avec Philippe Petit, Baudrillard suggests that modern politics, and indeed modern life, are both a game of pretense, and that nothing in fact exists. In The Vital Illusion, the author again takes modern society to task for its unwillingness to embrace diversity; he argues that cloning and copying use "the virtual to murder the real," and that people are working to make an already confusing world even more unintelligible.

In 2000 his book Mots de passe was translated into English and published as Passwords. Writing in the Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, B. Gerry Coulter noted: "Baudrillard describes words as ‘passers or vehicles of ideas’ and the book gives us fifteen of these ‘passwords’ from his oeuvre: object, value, symbolic exchange, seduction, obscene, transparency of evil, virtual, randomness, chaos, end, perfect crime, destiny, impossible exchange, duality, and thought." Coulter went on to call Passwords "an excellent book for undergraduates grappling with Baudrillard's thought and contemporary society." Coulter also added that the book "take[s] us deep inside the system of production and consumption to its most powerful (and vulnerable) features."

In The Spirit of Terrorism; and, Requiem for the Twin Towers, Baudrillard discusses the symbolic power of terrorism within the context of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. In his discussion he points out that the modern-day terrorists forgo the tactics of past revolutionary struggles based entirely on confrontations with ideology and politics but rather use a symbolic challenge to assault its enemies. B.W. Powe, writing in the Globe and Mail, noted that when the author "looks at the cultural meaning of shapes and figures—the design of the two towers themselves—he brings a reading of signs and symbols most will find interesting." Mosaic contributor Leonard Wilcox wrote: "For Baudrillard, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 constituted a ‘singularity,’ a kind of avant-garde artwork that made a stunning raid on human consciousness." Andrew Hussey wrote in the New Statesman that the author "offers a sober and hardheaded commentary on the events of last September and their aftermath."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Baudrillard, Jean, De la seduction, Galilee (Paris, France), 1979.

Baudrillard, Jean, The Vital Illusion, edited by Julia Witwer, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 60, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1990.

Kellner, Douglas, Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond, Stanford University Press (Palo Alto, CA), 1990.

Zurbrugg, Nicholas, Jean Baudrillard: Art and Artifact, Sage (London, England), 1997.

PERIODICALS

Artforum International, summer, 1993, Laurence Rickels, review of The Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena, pp. 11-12.

Booklist, August, 1999, Ray Olson, review of L'autre, p. 2007.

Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, February, 2005, B. Gerry Coulter, review of Passwords, p. 112.

Choice, July, 1989, C.A. Presslee, review of Selected Writings, p. 1915; June, 1994, S.M. DiGiacomo, review of Symbolic Exchange and Death, p. 1620; November, 1995, E. Stavro-Pearce, review of The Illusion of the End, p. 540.

Contemporary Sociology, July, 1989, Charles C. Lemert, review of Selected Writings, pp. 639-640; May, 1991, Barry Smart, review of Seduction, p. 461; January, 1993, Jorge Arditi, "Out of the Maze?," pp. 19-23; March, 1997, Stephen Pfohl, review of The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, pp. 138-141.

Encounter, September, 1990, Richard Mayne, review of Cool Memories, 1980-1985, p. 52.

Film Quarterly, summer, 1997, Wheeler Winston Dixon, review of The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, pp. 54-55.

French Review, April, 1987, Charles J. Stivale, review of La gauche divine: chronique des annees 1977-1984, pp. 742-744; October, 1995, Ernest Sturm, review of Le Crime Parfait, pp. 126-127; December, 1995, Ernest Sturm, review of Figures de l'alterite, pp. 322-323; May, 1996, James H. Quinlan, review of Baudrillard Live: Selected Interviews, pp. 1031-1032.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), December 7, 2002, B.W. Powe, "Ideas: Intellectuals and Sept. 11," includes review of The Spirit of Terrorism; and, Requiem for the Twin Towers.

Guardian (London, England), August 3, 2006, Charlotte Higgins, "Baudrillard to Appear at London Art Fair."

Kenyon Review, winter, 1990, Steven Helmling, review of Selected Writings, pp. 204-207.

Library Journal, May 1, 1990, A.J. Anderson, review of Seduction, p. 101; December, 1998, Ali Houissa, review of Paroxysm: Interviews with Philippe Petit, p. 110.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, March 7, 1993, Jack Miles, "Frontier Spirit; and, Requiem for the Twin Towers," p. 12; December 17, 2000, Susan Salter Reynolds, review of The Vital Illusion, p. 15.

Middle East Quarterly, March, 1996, D. Pipes, review of The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, pp. 81-82.

Modern Language Review, October, 1990, Ian Whitehouse, review of Selected Writings, p. 989; July, 1996, Nick Groom, review of Symbolic Exchange and Death, pp. 689-691.

Mosaic, June, 2006, Leonard Wilcox, review of The Spirit of Terrorism; and, Requiem for the Twin Towers, p. 89.

National Catholic Reporter, July 28, 1995, Jeff Dietrich, "Cultural Trivia Make the World Go Round," p. 15.

National Interest, fall, 2004, Paul Hollander, review of The Spirit of Terrorism; and, Requiem for the Twin Towers, p. 134.

New Republic, September 10, 1990, Arthur C. Danto, review of Selected Writings, pp. 44-49.

New Statesman, June 26, 1987, Meaghan Morris, "Asleep at the Wheel?," pp. 28-29; June 3, 1988, Simon Frith, "What Is a Washing Machine?," pp. 23-24; September 9, 2002, Andrew Hussey, review of The Spirit of Terrorism; and, Requiem for the Twin Towers, p. 50.

New Statesman, May 30, 1997, George Walden, "Flaming Optimist," pp. 22-23; November 21, 1997, Tristan Quinn, review of Fragments: Cool Memories III, 1991-1995, p. 49.

New Statesman and Society, July, 1990, Rosalind Coward, "Marvellous to Be a Woman?," pp. 35-36; April 30, 1993, Jonathan Ree, review of The Transparency of Evil, p. 46; January 20, 1995, Marina Benjamin, review of The Illusion of the End, pp. 36-37.

New York Times, November 20, 2005, Deborah Solomon, "Continental Drift," interview with author.

New York Times Book Review, February 12, 1989, James Marcus, review of America, p. 19.

New Yorker, September 16, 2002, Louis Menand, review of The Spirit of Terrorism; and, Requiem for the Twin Towers.

Publishers Weekly, April 6, 1990, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of Seduction, p. 107

Science-Fiction Studies, March, 1997, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, "More Cool Memories," pp. 164-166.

Sociology, November, 1995, Keith Tester, review of The Illusion of the End, pp. 747-748.

Spectator, March 29, 1997, Mark Bevir, "Excess and Irony to the Rescue," pp. 35-36.

Sulfur, spring, 1989, Thad Ziolkowski, "Indifference: Mike Bidlo and Ron Silliman," pp. 204-210; spring, 1991, Allen S. Weiss, "Anti-monuments and an Elegy," pp. 222-224.

Times Educational Supplement, May 14, 1993, Scott Bradfield, "Pot Shots in a Void," p. 10, section 2.

Times Literary Supplement, December 16, 1988, Zygmunt Bauman, "Disappearing into the Desert," p. 1391; January 28, 1994, Brian Rotman, "After the Orgy Is Over," p. 22.

Wall Street Journal, September 14, 1990, Donald Lyons, "New York As the City of Light (!)," p. A12.