Executive Reading: August

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"On Paradise Drive," By David Brooks

Reviewed by Margaret Teichert and Oleg Kaganovich

How’s this for an ambitious premise: Reject easy stereotypes, from “Leave it to Beaver” to “The Stepford Wives,” and search for a larger theme that explains our collective American mind-set. “On Paradise Drive,” a satiric social commentary by New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks, claims to examine the new suburban middle class. This book doesn’t decry suburbia as a disappointing conclusion to the American myth of “lighting out for the territory,” but what it does do isn’t exactly clear.
    In fact, Brooks states his intentions in the introduction. First, he wants to “describe what middle class life is really like;” second, to “solve the mystery of motivation;” and third, to “try to answer the question, ‘Are we as shallow as we look?’” Although he does each of these things (with varying degrees of success), it’s hard to tell throughout whether Brooks’ motivation stems more from affection or disdain.
    In the opening chapter, he asserts that suburban culture has deepened over the past few decades, becoming both denser and more interesting than previously suspected. Whereas suburbs used to be defined by their relationship to an urban core, now their essential characteristics are more complicated. Demographically, most suburbs bear no resemblance to the image they conjure. You are more likely to find “lesbian dentists, Iranian McMansions, Korean megachurches (and) nuclear-free-zone subdevelopments” than Ozzie and Harriet. Where we live, Brooks says, is no longer our destination; it's a “dot on the flowing plane of multidirectional movement.”
    Mobility, whether upward or not, is another of Brooks’ themes. The American middle class is constantly in motion, he says, always looking forward, planning the future. It is this vague sense of hope that dominates the American psyche, that we can achieve wealth or inner peace or, ideally, both. In a style that often reads like a less flamboyant (and more sarcastic) Oscar Wilde, Brooks tends to favor colorful hyperbole — i.e., all major purchases of consumer durable goods come down to which model has the best cup holders — over statistical significance to illustrate his points. 
    Amid many cultural skewers, Brooks makes a number of observations that ring painfully true. We have the biggest version we possibly can of everything, from our super duper Big Gulps to our super-sized SUVs. We have more memory on our computers than most of us know what to do with. We consume more of the world’s resources by far than any other country on the planet. Not that he claims any moral high ground on this point.
    In fact, he essentially suggests that it’s OK for us to consume as much as we want as long as we talk about it in the right way and keep an eye to the future — though which danger signs we should look for there is anyone’s guess.
Continued...

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