BLACKSBURG, Va., — Marshall Fishwick’s latest book, Popular Culture in a New Age, presents "an aerial mosaic" of popular culture the way photographers create pictures of large areas by matching up adjoining aerial photographs.
With a foreword by renowned author Tom Wolfe, "Popular Culture in a New Age shows how the poorly understood and often underestimated area known as popular culture affects all of our lives. "It will help you understand the way we eat, think, vote, and respond to our fast-changing world in the era of hype, spin doctors, chat rooms, and jargon," according to the publisher.
Just what is popular culture? "The people are a giant Atlas, carrying the world on their shoulders," wrote Fishwick, professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and director of the American Studies and Popular Culture programs at Virginia Tech. "How and why do they do it? To ask such questions will always be popular culture’s first task.
"I try not only to answer questions but to raise them and urge readers to ask new questions for themselves," Fishwick said. "We live in exciting but confusing times, when high hopes fall prey to false hypes." He writes not about reform and remedy, nor about political, social, or diplomatic history, but about popular culture. "I do so because I think the ‘culture of the people,’ more than some older and more formal disciplines, holds the mirror up to humankind in our postmodern, multicultural democracy. Reflecting sudden and dramatic changes, the mirror also suggests some recurring similarities, patterns, motives, and meanings."
Fishwick’s book, from its aerial vantage point, covers a multitude of topics, including "What to Make of the Millennium," "The New Gold Rush," "Folk/Fake/Pop," "Sacred Symbols," "Carnivals—Old and New," "The Celebrity Cult," "Black Popular Culture," "The Most Popular War," "Faith Takes a New Face," "The Most Popular Myth," and "Global Village—Utopia Revisited?"
Ray B. Brown, emeritus professor of Popular Culture at Bowling Green University in Ohio, calls Popular Culture in a New Age "brilliant and entertaining." "Widely read and deeply observant, Fishwick has scanned many aspects of our age, shown how it has grown out of life in earlier ages, and speculates where it will end up and why."
"You will find an amazing distillation of the habits, fads, icons, and heroes of people around the world," said Marvin Wachman, president emeritus of Temple University. "Fishwick’s analysis is historical, contemporary, and futuristic. It includes an intellectual as well as a down-to-earth approach as he deals with his voluminous material."
Daniel Walden, emeritus professor of American Studies at Penn State University, calls the book "astute and perceptive," and "beautifully put together, well written, wise and very perceptive." "Popular Culture in a New Age is the pinnacle of syntheses on American popular culture."
"I try not only to answer questions but to raise them and urge readers to ask new questions for themselves," Fishwick said. "We live in exciting but confusing times, when high hopes fall prey to false hypes." He writes not about reform and remedy, nor about political, social, or diplomatic history, but about popular culture. "I do so because I think the ‘culture of the people,’ more than some older and more formal disciplines, holds the mirror up to humankind in our postmodern, multicultural democracy. Reflecting sudden and dramatic changes, the mirror also suggests some recurring similarities, patterns, motives, and meanings."
"Each essay in this collection is a richly rewarding intellectual exploration, but taken together, the tessarae of this particular mosaic form a rich and vibrant image of popular culture that amounts to much more than the sum of its individual parts," according to Aldo Bello of Mind & Media Inc. "From Lord Tennyson to Marshall McLuhan, the printing press to the Internet, folklore to pop lore, Fishwick and his band of merry men and women delve into the mysteries of our collective psyche and interpret the meaning of seemingly unrelated political, literary, artistic, electronic, and historical events. What emerges from this compilation is a holistic understanding of our present through the prism of things past."
Marshall Fishwick holds several honorary degrees and teaching awards. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Culture Association and is a co-founder of the Popular Culture Association. Having served as Fulbright Distinguished Professor in Denmark, Italy, Germany, Korea, and India, he helped establish the American Studies Research Center in Hyerabad, India, which now houses the largest collection of American books in Asia. Fishwick is the author of many books, including American Heroes: Myth and Reality, Icons of Popular Culture, Go and Catch a Falling Star, and Popular Culture: Cavespace to Cyberspace.
Professor: Marshall Fishwick, 540-231-5033, mfishwic@vt.edu
PR CONTACT: Sally Harris, 540-231-6759, slharris@vt.edu