Utopia's Debris: Selected Essays

His writings range from popular culture-trash novels, architectural wonders and horrors-to appreciations of the best of modern literature, art, and cinema. They include his convincing (and highly entertaining) debunking of fashionable conspiracy theories, a spirited and contrarian defense of Bill Clinton€s autobiography, a Mencken-like examination of the rise of Arnold Schwarzenegger and the politics of celebrity in what Indiana calls the Age of Contempt.

A postmodern Emerson, Indiana wields scalpel-sharp wit and a fealty to logic on issues in which, all too often, irrationalism and emotionalism hold sway. At times rigorously serious, at other times whimsical, Indiana€s most conspicuous feature is skepticism-his wildly satirical contempt for conventional wisdom.