Larvatus Prodeo

Weighing in at 230g and measurements of 234mm * 153mm * 16mm, Cassandra Wilkinson’s Don’t Panic has a lot to offer Livres enthusiasts. Besides its comfortable throwing weight, keen biblioclasts will find plenty between its two covers to inspire plenty of high-performance book hurling.

The blurb promises a “fast paced, funny and fiercely optimistic exploration of sex, music, carbon trading, Frankenstein food, child labour, gay parents, video games, economic deregulation, doof-doof music and global security.” While the copywriters were alliterating there was at least one other f-word they might have slipped in, in the interests of providing the reader with a fair and objective appraisal of the book - it’s fatuous. It starts out fatuous from the first sentence of the Introduction (on page vii) and by the end of the second chapter (page 53), it’s very clear that the fatuities aren’t going to let up any page soon.

Wilkinson’s writing style shows a polished glibness and a deft use of hyperbole - when these are combined, the result is certainly fast-paced and if you’re prepared to go along with it, you’ll easily leap over the gaping holes in Wilkinson’s arguments, in much the way that the breathless, pacy style of a Ludlum thriller - or any other piece of airport fiction - will keep yout turning pages long after the plot has abandoned any pretentions to plausibility.

Is the book funny, as promised in the blurb? Well, I noticed, on several occasions that Wilkinson was writing with comic intent but unfortunately the real comedy - such as it is - happens when Wilkinson appears to be speaking in earnest - as in this description of what’s wrong with panic-mongering, a mere 4 paragraphs into the introduction:

When everyone with a barrow to push about the family, health, housing, child care, education, the environment, security, and innovation simultaneously yells ‘FIRE!’, the country is not rallied but demoralised. Our leaders are sent into shivering fits of confusion about what to do and where to start.

Two pages on you’ll find John Anderson (former deputy prime minister) and John Howard named and blamed as panic-mongers followed by a quick resume of the “Children Overboard” scandal. As Wilkinson notes, he did quite well, politically, out of the Tampa scare which doesn’t fit the picture of a leader “sent into shivering fits of confusion”. The result, for me at least, was that I had to put the book aside until I was no longer distracted by the question of who “our leaders” are, if we are not to count our elected, and twice re-elected, Prime Minister as one of them. One candidate, for those who prefer to believe that the Illuminatus Trilogy is a work of complete fiction, is presented on page x.

Once you can get past the distracting absurdities of the introduction, Chapter One “The Sadness Epidemic and the Slandering of Freedom” offers an entertaining, conspiracy theoretical account of why so many people are talking about a “sadness epidemic” - it’s all Big Pharma’s fault. Much of this Chapter was familiar from the edited extract that appeared in The Age earlier this year, which I posted about here.

The chapter might have been more convincing if, in the typesetting of the book, Pluto Press had thrown in a few more fnords (This post to the best of my knowledge is entirely fnord-free - at least it was at the time of writing).

Be afraid. Be very afraid. You are not being told everything. There is a hidden agenda here.

However, thanks to the fnord deficiency, the chapter remains unconvincing. In fact, suggesting that the “sadness epidemic” is the product of Big Pharma strikes me as having a “strong family resemblance” to the panic mongering that Wilkinson decries. Historically, Big Pharma isn’t the first industry to offer consumers mood altering substances - human beings have been tinkering with mood-altering drugs for at least as long as they’ve been staring into the Abyss - that is, literally millenia. For the Mediterranean cultures, it all started when some poor Sumerian bugger decided that staring into the Abyss was a lot easier to take if you had a couple of beers inside you. Later, thanks to contact with other cultures, we got the various - and sometimes ambiguous - benefits of opium, tobacco, tea, coffee, chocolate and cocaine. Every one of which presented the opportunity for various zealots to foment a bit of moral or cultural panic. Which they did.

One theme that recurs through the book (or at least the first two chapters) is the need to counter panic with facts. On the evidence so far, Wilkinson’s taste for facts is a somewhat picky one (if I ever get round to posting on Chapter Two, we might look at the reasons for that pickiness) and, at times, prefers a quick homespun bromide:

When we enquire into the symptoms of what the mental health professionals are calling mental illness, there is a wide range from very serious problems such as schizophrenia to fairly garden-variety issues such as adolescent self-image… Many specialists are over-emphasising the scope and seriousness of our collective mental health problems…

As I recall, ‘feelings of depression’, tiredness, isolation and anxiety about body image are called being a teenager. It’s why rock ‘n’ roll exists. It’s what made Molly Ringwald a star…

If you’re sad because you’re poor and your mum hits you and your dad can’t get a job, are you mentally ill or completely rational? The problem is certainly real and the pain is real but the pain is derived from circumstance rather than biology or psychosis - or to put it another way, do not adjust your set: the problem is in your life. Prosperity brings unprecedented opportunity to change your life…

That last one is a beaut, isn’t it? A little moment of pop-psychology for the under tens. Later in the book, Wilkinson relates the personal experience which led her to understand the empowering effects of prosperity but I’ll leave that for later. Right now, in fairness to Wilkinson, I’d better give you the rest of that last sentence:

… and unprecedented resources for communities to devote to programs such as parenting education [that is, to teach your no-hoper mum to stop hitting you], employment assistance [to get your no-hoper dad into a job] and social infrasturcture which improve[s] social functioning and reduce[s] the negative effects of poverty [so no-one will ever have to live in housing commission accomodation ever again and there’ll be no more no-hopers like your mum and dad, ever]

What’s annoying in passages such as these - in fact the whole damn chapter, is the way in which Wilkinson so often, and so bathetically, slips from lucid and potentially insightful argument to obtuse banality, often within the space of a single paragraph. That may be a good way to ensure that you get to the right conclusion - where a considered examination of the issues might derail your argument, quickly say something that doesn’t look too conspicuously silly and move on - but will it carry the reader along with you?

Not this one, it won’t.

Update: on reviewing the published version of this post, it’s become obvious that we need to get hold of a fnord blocker plug-in for WordPress.