Cambodia: A Book for People Who Find Television Too Slow

by Brian Fawcett

Overview

In this disturbing collection of investigative fictions, Brian Fawcett asserts that the informational white noise of the Global Village is creating a cultural and intellectual breakdown that will eventually lead to the disappearance of local and individual identity. He argues that under the glitzy surfaces of television and the information “revolution” lie the same intentions that ran amok in Khmer Rouge Cambodia: the extermination of memory and imagination.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780889222373
Publisher:	Talonbooks, Limited
Publication date:	02/18/1986
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Brian Fawcett
Born in 1944 in Prince George, B.C., Brian Fawcett has written poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Talonbooks has published My Career With the Leafs & Other Stories (1992), The Secret Journal of Alexander MacKenzie (1985), Capital Tales (1984) and Cambodia: A Book for People Who Find Television Too Slow (1986) by Brian Fawcett.

Editorial Reviews

This peculiar collection's title essay, set in small type across the bottom third of each page, is a rambling meditation on the U.S. bombing and invasion of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge massacres, the American public's amnesia concerning these and other horrors, Joseph Conrad, colonialism and the difficulty of being a writer adrift in the ``Global Village.'' Sitting astride this ``subtext'' are 13 short essays and stories. In one, Marshall McLuhan meets St. Paul on the road to Damascus and counsels the apostle on making Christianity a big business. Other pieces deal with the stupidity of corporate meetings, the effects of a satellite dish on a small town, the experience of eating ``Universal Chicken'' at a drive-in and an imaginary effort to design a shelter to house chronically unemployed professionals. The odd layout is pointless and annoying, and the relationship between the running essay and the other slight pieces is tangential at best. (September)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly