FROM THE PUBLISHER
Is everything possible and nothing true? According to Roger Kimball, this
belief, with its "mixture of gullibility and cynicism," characterizes much
of our modern culture. Thus his new collection of essays, Experiments
Against Reality, is "largely a chronicle of spiritual disillusionment." No
one who is seriously concerned with the fate of out culture can afford to
ignore it.
SYNOPSIS
Confronting the dilemmas of modernist and postmodernist thought, Roger
Kimball in this new collection of his work explores the literary and
philosophical underpinnings of modernity as well as the state of our culture
today. Experiments Against Reality displays the sophistication, breadth of
knowledge, and clarity of argument that have made Mr. Kimball one of the
most trenchant critics of our contemporary culture. He begins by
considering the influential poet and theorist T.E. Hulme, and shows how the
work of Walter Pater, Eliot, Auden, Wallace Stevens, Robert Musil, and
others can be seen as efforts to articulate a convincing alternative to the
intellectual and spiritual desolations of the age. Turning to the
philosophical tradition, Mr. Kimball suggests how figures from Mill and
Nietzsche to Sartre, Heidegger, Foucault, E.M. Cioran, Francis Fukuyama, and
Joseph Pieper have addressed-or in many cases evaded-the defining moral
imperatives of modernity. Finally he steps back to consider more generally
the career of contemporary culture-the trivializing nature of the
contemporary art world; the academic attack on historical truth and
scientific rationality; the fate of the "two cultures" controversy.
"Enlightenment," Mr. Kimball writes, "sought to emancipate man by liberating
reason and battling against superstition. But reason liberated entirely
from tradition has turned out to be rancorous and hubristic-in short,
something irrational." Experiments Against Reality offers continuing
evidence of Mr. Kimball's stature as one of our most important cultural
critics.