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A review by emmalita
Gasoline Dreams: Waking Up from Petroculture by Imre Szeman, Mark Simpson, Simon Orpana
3.0
The contents of Gasoline Dreams are great. The book is physically hard to read. It took me months to get through it because the woodcut style of the text and graphics gave me headaches. I became reluctant to pick it up because who likes headaches?
The cover is deceptive. It is brightly colored with the text and integrated into an interesting but easy to comprehend visual. The insides, though are all in black and white with text and images fighting for space. It was tough to figure out what I had read and what I hadn’t because there was so much competing for my eye’s attention. I reread some pages several times before I understood what he was saying. After all that effort to comprehend what was on the page, I’d come back to it and realize the only information I retained was the headache I had after reading a few pages the last time.
From what I remember, his ideas are interesting and I’d love to see it as a miniseries or listen to him on a podcast. Orpana is pulling a lot of threads together, maybe too many threads, but they all look interesting. My best guess is that Orpana’s theory is that our consumption of fossil fuels (petroculture) has become a part of our (Western/North American) culture and as such it has become a part of every part of our lives – political, religious, financial, and artistic. It has become so deeply ingrained with identity that people will become violent and irrational in defense of petroculture. I don’t think he’s wrong, and I wish the information had been presented in a way that was more digestible. I don’t mean dumbed down – I mean my eyeballs screamed at the page and my brain ran away.
I received this as an advance reader copy from Fordham University Press via NetGalley. My opinions are my own.
The cover is deceptive. It is brightly colored with the text and integrated into an interesting but easy to comprehend visual. The insides, though are all in black and white with text and images fighting for space. It was tough to figure out what I had read and what I hadn’t because there was so much competing for my eye’s attention. I reread some pages several times before I understood what he was saying. After all that effort to comprehend what was on the page, I’d come back to it and realize the only information I retained was the headache I had after reading a few pages the last time.
From what I remember, his ideas are interesting and I’d love to see it as a miniseries or listen to him on a podcast. Orpana is pulling a lot of threads together, maybe too many threads, but they all look interesting. My best guess is that Orpana’s theory is that our consumption of fossil fuels (petroculture) has become a part of our (Western/North American) culture and as such it has become a part of every part of our lives – political, religious, financial, and artistic. It has become so deeply ingrained with identity that people will become violent and irrational in defense of petroculture. I don’t think he’s wrong, and I wish the information had been presented in a way that was more digestible. I don’t mean dumbed down – I mean my eyeballs screamed at the page and my brain ran away.
I received this as an advance reader copy from Fordham University Press via NetGalley. My opinions are my own.