Garage Criticism: Cultural Missives in an Age of Distraction

Literary Nonfiction. Literary Criticism. Cultural Studies. Montaigne Medal Finalist. In GARAGE CRITICISM: CULTURAL MISSIVES IN AN AGE OF DISTRACTION, National Magazine Award-nominated Peter Babiak eviscerates and deflates some of the cultural sacred cows of our time. From Fifty Shades of Grey ("Hot for Teacher: What Fifty Shades of Grey Taught Me About Salacious Grammar, Sexy Women and the Scandalous Conflation of Cultural and Literary Culture") to the disintegration of the "deep read" ("F You Professor: Tumblr, Triggers and the Allergies of Reading") to the Hunger Games ("The Revolution Will Not Be Televised—But It Might Be Carnivalized 'N' Shit") and Twilight ("Really Dumb Students"), through to student/professor relationships, inappropriate office visits, and a shared "voluptuous appetite for Nabokov." Babiak deconstructs our fascination with internet culture, takes on the inanities of youthful, ungrammatical irises, devolves the rhetorical hallucinations of economics and marketing, and reasserts the supremacy of linguistic thinking in everyday cultural affairs. Babiak's is a new and timely voice in the arena of cultural criticism and critical theory. "In essays that are variously insightful, funny, heart-rending and sometimes sleazy, Babiak analyzes the effects of popular culture on how we perceive reality."—John K. Collins