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4 reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Thoughtful and complex
18 Jan 2011
Format:Paperback
I'm not terribly sure why the first reviewer lobbed such a negative assessment at this book. Even more puzzling is his charge that he was "looking for analysis of post-apocalyptic film and literature" and somehow got something else.
Berger uses the idea of apocalypse in order to explore representations of both the imagined end of the world (as found in St. John's Revelation, for example, or the Terminator movies) as well as events which traumatize on a comparable mass scale (the Holocaust, for example). Among the films and texts he analyzes are "Eve's Tattoo," by Emily Prager; _The White Hotel_, by D.M. Thomas, _Beloved_, by Toni Morrison, and the oddly futuristic film _Until the End of the World_. I suppose if one were to define "apocalypse" more narrowly, one might be disappointed by this theoretical approach. I found it illuminating, however. (He writes at some length in the book's first chapter about Americans' longstanding pop-cultural fascination with films like Mad Max and Independence Day, begging a re-examination of why we are drawn so intensely to moments of mass destruction.)
Finally, I didn't find the book especially "jargony," just complex. (Then again, I'm a Ph.D. student in rhetoric, so perhaps Berger's professional vocabulary as an English professor is closer to mine than the other reviewer's.) I've actually cited _After the End_ numerous times in my own work, both published and for class. If you're got a serious academic interest in media, trauma theory, or late twentieth-century American culture, this book definitely belongs on your "to read" list.
Berger uses the idea of apocalypse in order to explore representations of both the imagined end of the world (as found in St. John's Revelation, for example, or the Terminator movies) as well as events which traumatize on a comparable mass scale (the Holocaust, for example). Among the films and texts he analyzes are "Eve's Tattoo," by Emily Prager; _The White Hotel_, by D.M. Thomas, _Beloved_, by Toni Morrison, and the oddly futuristic film _Until the End of the World_. I suppose if one were to define "apocalypse" more narrowly, one might be disappointed by this theoretical approach. I found it illuminating, however. (He writes at some length in the book's first chapter about Americans' longstanding pop-cultural fascination with films like Mad Max and Independence Day, begging a re-examination of why we are drawn so intensely to moments of mass destruction.)
Finally, I didn't find the book especially "jargony," just complex. (Then again, I'm a Ph.D. student in rhetoric, so perhaps Berger's professional vocabulary as an English professor is closer to mine than the other reviewer's.) I've actually cited _After the End_ numerous times in my own work, both published and for class. If you're got a serious academic interest in media, trauma theory, or late twentieth-century American culture, this book definitely belongs on your "to read" list.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Brilliant and provocative
23 April 2012
Format:Paperback
I recently wrote a paper comparing two post-apocalyptic works, neither of which is discussed directly by James Berger in his book. However, I found Berger's thinking to be more original, provocative, and helpful than anything written on the subject of apocalyptic literature since Kermode's seminal work. Berger is post-modern in that he knows he cannot write from a privileged "outside" position -- hence the personal sharing that at least one reviewer here found unfortunate. But he is very direct in his criticism of those post-modern theoreticians who wanted to throw out history and narrative and then turned out to have been Nazi sympathizers all too ready to want to forget the Holocaust. If you are looking for fresh, provocative thinking that can spark your own thinking about whatever post-apocalyptic material you are working on, this is a great resource.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
A Must Read for Students of Apocalyptic Culture
16 Aug 2011
Format:Paperback
If you're looking for extensive commentary on Biblical apocalypse, millennial religious movements, or apocalyptic science fiction, this is not your book. But it doesn't pretend to be that kind of book, either. Instead, After the End offers an intriguing psychoanalytic theory of apocalyptic culture, a study of how novelists and poststructuralist theorists represent the Holocaust, and readings of contemporary American literature (Morrison, Pynchon, etc.), to name some of the book's major topics. If you're a student of apocalyptic culture and you're interested in broader theoretical and historical issues, you absolutely must read this book.
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