Please cc V. Lombari

[LOT64 at aol.com]

I feel the question is like asking, "how do you feel about the color red in
painting?"  The answer depends on how the color is used.  If references are
used to avoid characterizations and as an easy short cut to evoke feelings or
ideas then there's a problem.  However we are swimming in a sea of popular
culture as Mao's guerrilla swims in the sea of the people.  Its inescapable
and everywhere.  How can an author paint a picture of our times and ignore
it?

Jean-Luc Godard makes extensive use of popular culture in a way that helps us
see it in an alienated light.  This is the only way we can be shocked into
seeing what is pervasively all around us.  Godard also uses high culture,
philosophy, classical music, and architecture to the same end.  

The most extreme example of this is Bret Ellis' AMERICAN PSYCHO.  The book is
an obsessive example of the spewing forth of brand names.  I believe the book
was satirical in intent.  It blames  the popular and consumer culture for
deranging the protaganist.  The explicit scenes of psychopathology blinded
many readers to the critique implicit in the book.

                                      Ron Churgin