The Decline of Pleasure (Classic Reprint)

from CliffBurns

One of my favorite opening lines of all time: "I am going to start out by assuming that you are approximately as unhappy as I am." Kerr is genial and pleasing company. Droll, his observations spot on...

from antao

(Original Review, 1981-05-25) Here's a quiz on "sex in literature". The problem is I don't know the answers. This comes from Walter Kerr's 1962 book "The Decline of Pleasure." He doesn't present it as a quiz, but merely describes incidents in recent novels and plays that he evidently expects the ...

from DinadansFriend

This is not a quick read. However, Mr. Kerr, otherwise the Theatre critic for the New York times, tries to analize the tastes of the USA at large from a New York stand point. As a place to regard the North American mindset, especially that of the very materialistic 1950's and early sixties it wil...

from HadriantheBlind

Consumerism is bad, intellectual pleasures are good. I've seen the same thing dozens of times before. The author deserves some credit for seeing this in the 1950s-60s, just when the modern consumer culture was booming.

from bkinetic

Walter Kerr, who David Niven portrayed in the movie "Please Don't Eat the Daisies", was a perceptive social and literary critic. His perspective remains applicable today, especially because consumerism has taken an even greater toll on pleasures than it had in the early 1960's.