TV Obsessive
Barrett Swanson’s Lost in Summerland
Paul: Barrett Swanson’s Lost in Summerland is a collection of fourteen incisive essays that criss-cross the country cross-examining the cultural undercurrents of modern-day America. Frequently likened to John Didion’s works, Lost in Summerland is very much in the tradition of Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968) and The White Album (1979). However, I found the collection to be even more evocative of David Foster Wallace’s A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments (1997)—each piece gradually delineating a kaleidoscopic portraiture of our hyper-manic age.
Often neurotic, incredibly self-reflexive, and mired in existential dread, Swanson’s cultural commentaries deftly capture universal truths and fads from personalized anecdotes and experiences. Like A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, which is an assortment of articles largely written on assignment for major periodicals like Harper’s, Premiere, and Esquire, the essays in Lost in Summerland can be found at various online publications, including Harper’s, The Believer, The Paris Review, and The New Yorker. And to push the David Foster Wallace comparison just a bit further, two of Swanson’s pieces felt eerily indicative of the late postmodern maestro. Filled with Floridian malaise and nihilistic musings, Swanson’s “Notes from A Last Man” closely resembled Wallace’s darkly humorous account of enduring a midlife crisis aboard a weeklong Caribbean cruise in “Shipping Out;” and Swanson’s deconstruction of the nation’s crass materialism and recreational absurdities in “For Whom Is The Water Park Fun?” easily recalled to mind Wallace’s equally cynical, surrealistic, and meticulous reflections on the state fair in “Ticket to the Fair.”
Swanson’s topics and style may feel familiar at times, but his insights and inquiries offer something novel and fresh. Far from derivative, the aforementioned associations with Didion and Wallace are not intended to be reductive so much as to accentuate how timely and timeless Swanson’s voice is. Every piece catalogues and indicts America with a discerning eye. In “Midwestern Gothic”, Swanson comments upon the perilous allure of Internet-fueled paranoia by tracking his own grief-stricken descent into temporary madness while researching conspiracy theories about a serial killing cult. In “Men At Work,” he challenges both the tropes of toxic masculinity and the racketeering retreats trying to bank in on our sudden aversion to gender orthodoxy. In “Lost in Summerland,” he explores the replacement of traditional religion with occultist / paranormal proclivities. And in “The is Not a Test,” he deliberates whether or not obsessions with natural disasters and emergency preparedness is a sign of prudence or compulsively phobic behavior (or both).
Scrupulous and immersive, the individual pieces in Lost in Summerland coalesce to form a poignant snapshot of the myriad pathologies of contemporary culture: providing a unique and uncanny lens into our deranged zeitgeist.
Those are our recommendations this week! What are yours? Let us know in the comments!
