The Standardization of Error

the long version

This book from 1927 is a gem for its gentle yet mocking and ultimately devastating humor. Although the details and sometimes the turns of speech may be antiquated, the general lines of attack remain strong. If the reader will supply current equivalents for the references of a bygone age, he or she will find that what Stefansson is mocking are the monsters of today ─ in utero. That is, the corporations, the commercials, the products that would make us clean and healthy, the obligatory holidays, the worry about and exploitation of children, the busybody church with its invisible god, the mass-media entertainment complex. Stefansson the Icelandic explorer, the Canadian citizen, the leftist radical, steps out of the frozen retreats, casting a disparaging eye on the nonsense of the early American consumer society and saying a few choice words about the absurd myths it propagates.