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the complete review - non-fiction

Coming of Age
at the End of History

by
Camille de Toledo

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B : often silly and already somewhat dated, but written with a lot of verve and makes some points of interest

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "Daß man Toledos Prosa als Literatur lesen sollte, liegt aber vor allem daran, daß Toledo sein Außen, sein Jenseits, während er noch mit (zum Teil eher kindischen und naiven) Argumenten darum ringt, bis er, als seine Lösung, eine "Romantik der offenen Augen" präsentiert -- daß er dieses Außen von Anfang an gefunden hat: in seiner Sprache, die sich der Verfügbarkeit und Leichtverständlichkeit konsequent verweigert (.....) Und genau da liegt die größte Schwäche dieses Buchs, das viel rhetorischen Aufwand betreibt, um immer wieder zu beklagen, daß alles, wirklich alles, was in der Kunst und in der Populärkultur einst rebellisch, widerständig, böse war, längst aufgefressen worden sei, weichgekaut und dann wieder ausgespuckt, zum freundlichen Gebrauch in der Apple-Werbung oder in Management-Seminaren." - Claudius Seidl, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
  
  
• "Toledos Buch ist ein einziger Sturmlauf gegen die Postmoderne. Die Rhetorik, derer er sich dabei bedient, bläht sich bisweilen gefährlich." - Ingo Arend, Freitag
  
  
• "Le tout, empêtré dans un salmigondis de références culturelles (j’ai tout lu, tout vu, de Baudrillard à Godard, regardez comme je suis cultivé !). Cette petite pique mise à part, l’irruption de ce nouveau venu dans le PLF (paysage littéraire français) est plutôt une bonne nouvelle. C'est même rassurant." - Guillaume Chérel, L'Humanité
  
  
• "What's most valuable about Coming of Age at the End of History is Toledo's willingness to throw himself wildly into grand ideas. He uses punk rock, the Situationists, and Jean-Marie Messier, the once super-CEO of Vivendi, all in one breath to condemn the "mass dandyism" of today -- an indictment of the cynicism and general acceptance of the status quo, of mediocrity. Or, put another way, Toledo is targeting his angry, pointed finger on the educated liberals who spend their time watching Jon Stewart and reading The Onion. Instead of resistance, the young, smart, and discontented have relegated themselves to unruffled, even enjoyable, complacency." - Andrew Bast, The Village Voice

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Camille de Toledo's essay dates from 2002, but his bracketing of an 'end of history' in that space between the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the attacks on New York and Washington D.C. in 2001 is plausible enough. As he notes, Francis Fukuyama already proposed it earlier in 1989, and for a while, as the former Soviet bloc converged with the West, there was a sense of that in the air. History has since come back, with a very different sort of vengeance, but Coming of Age at the End of History is still an interesting document of the times.
       Born in 1976, 'Camille de Toledo' was clearly disappointed by the world he was growing up in. He found it stifling, and so:

My goal in setting out on this exploratory mission into its invisible architecture has been to try and understand how revolt has been neutralized and how in our resulting helplessness -- since there are apparently no other options open -- we seem condemned to seek shelter in irony.

"I'm totally ready to throw Molotov cocktails," you said to yourself after class, "but at whom ?"

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Links:

• Soft Skull publicity page

• Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (German)
• North Coast Journal
• The Village Voice

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About the Author:

       French author Camille de Toledo (actually: Alexis Mital) was born in 1976.

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