PositivePopMattersMenand’s new book stretches beyond 700 pages and requires a plurality of people to thoroughly tell the story. But some also say he’s missing a big idea, or that if \'freedom\' really is the connective tissue in this work, it doesn’t adequately conjoin each section ... Refreshingly, Menand doesn’t follow causality or the cascading effect of actors and events. Instead, he uses feedback loops, throughputs, and a sympathetic timeslot to anyone who had a new or bold idea. These may also be the defining features of the Cold War-era avant-garde, so it makes sense that he’d tell his story in this way, although it may at times feel a tad too complicated ... this structure hedges any hierarchy of particular ideas or artists. As constellations lose or gain their brightness by our position in relation to them, Menand’s articulation of the relations between people, ideas, and forms, is a system where the point is not to hierarchize major and minor characters. Linearity is downplayed, there is little reference to today’s \'topical\' themes, and there are few 100-character aphorisms to offer simple guideposts ... Menand swaps hagiography for refreshing candor ... Entertainingly, subjects trade blows throughout Menand’s book ... Occasionally, you’d expect Menand to go further with illustrating the connections between characters ... Menand only occasionally trades an analysis of the shifting tides of identarian consciousness with the language of today’s discourse. The stories here don’t need this type of genuflection to popular heuristics because they are already ripe with meaning.
