"No Pity for the Poor Reader"
My second—and last—Naomi Klein post. Via Arts & Letters Daily, Canadian journalist Robert Fulford slogs through The Shock Doctrine, currently the number one non-fiction book in the Great White North (just edginging out Bill Clinton's Giving) and is underwhelmed. It's a wonderfully mean review. Sample:
If supporters of free trade celebrate a success, like China, Klein calls it "corporatism" and reminds us that many millions of Chinese remain impoverished. When globalism fails, in Argentina or Indonesia, Klein quickly identifies the enemies of humanity, the "Chicago Boys," University of Chicago economists who destroy social democracy everywhere.
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Klein writes with little sense of style and no pity for the poor reader. The Shock Doctrine requires that we hack through a thicket of self-contradictions and wild overstatements. For her, hyperbole is not a literary device, it's a way of life.
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If you can manage to read Klein, you need read no more. Learn her way of thinking and you'll not be required to think again. She delivers a packaged one-size-fits-all theory of history that shares just one attribute with Marxism: When you have absorbed Klein you will in future always know the answer before you know the question.
For a more generous review, check out John Grey's ebullient endorsement of The Shock Doctrine in—you guessed it—The Guardian.
