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"In this truly one-of-a-kind book, the author/narrator - a representative, in extremis, of contemporary American obsession with beauty, celebrity, transmitted image - finds himself suspended, fascinated, in the remoteness of our new wall-to-wall mediascape. It is a remoteness that both perplexes and enthralls him." "In 52 short takes, he attends a warm-up session for a taping of Oprah ... discovers he has been airbrushed out of a photograph that appears in The New York Times ... considers the existential implications of (and winds up completely identifying with) a movie actor forever consigned to playing the sidekick ... diagnoses "information sickness" ... wonders why he finds women wearing eyeglasses so erotic ... arranges a hundred bumper stickers into a kind of autobiography ... and experiences other dizzying phenomena of the late twentieth century." "Through dazzling sleight of hand in which the public becomes private and the private becomes public, the entire book - clicking from confession to family-album photograph to family chronicle to sexual fantasy to pseudo-scholarly footnote to reportage to personal essay to stand-up comedy to cultural criticism to literary criticism to film criticism to prose-poem to litany to bumper sticker to outtake - becomes both an anatomy of American culture and a searing self-portrait."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved