The Scandal of Pleasure: Art in an Age of Fundamentalism

by Wendy Steiner

Book Overview

Surveying a wide range of cultural controversies, from the Mapplethorpe affair to Salman Rushdie's death sentence, from canon-revision in the academy to the scandals that have surrounded Anthony Blunt, Martin Heidegger, and Paul de Man, Wendy Steiner shows that the fear and outrage they inspired are the result of dangerous misunderstanding about the relationship between art and life.

"Stimulating. . . . A splendid rebuttal of those on the left...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226772233
• ISBN13: 9780226772233
• Release Date: December 1995
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 263 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

First half excellent; second half good.

Ms. Steiner eloquently upholds and defends freedoms protected by the First Amendment in the first part of the book. The second part seems less focused, and she seems to want it both ways - freedom of speech AND political correctness. She should remember that although racism and prejudice are bad, the ends do not justify the means, and she turned me off in the second half by seeming to say that political correctness are the only acceptable alternative to all these various -isms at work today. But, on the whole, because the first part is so good, I give it four stars.