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Pop Rules
Like it or not pop rules. Its power is reinforced by the Internet and a digital, electronic media, which creates a media-scape as influential as the natural landscapes of forests, grasslands and mountains were to our pioneer ancestors. But many of us remain skeptical of pop culture. If you are like me, attracted by pop's energy, you may feel schizophrenic because you enjoy a good mindless Hollywood action movie while still feeling let down by its banality and lack of substance. Although I am a fan of pop, I am also one of its sternest critics because as a novelist, my tradition is literature with its ties to Gutenberg and the world of print. But as Susan Sontag points out in “Notes on Camp” there is no better person to talk about a cultural phenomenon than somebody with “a deep sympathy modified by revulsion.” So I offer the following Notes on Pop as an homage to Susan Sontag who once famously said that camp converts the serious into the frivolous.