OVER HERE: Criticizing America 1968-1989 by...

OVER HERE: Criticizing America 1968-1989 by Thomas R. Edwards (Rutgers University Press: $15.95). Most of these literary essays originally were published in the New York Review of Books, the Partisan Review or the New York Times Review of Books: Even readers who disagree with the author’s views will enjoy his polished, articulate prose. Edwards never really manages to come to grips with Marshall McLuhan’s theories about the nature of communications in “McLuhan’s Medium,” nor does he acknowledge the correctness of McLuhan’s thesis that the way to win public approval for a war is to sanitize network news broadcasts--a contention vindicated in the carefully restricted coverage permitted during the invasions of Grenada, Panama and Kuwait. However, his insightful criticism of Tom Wolfe’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities” utterly demolishes George Will’s absurd contention that Wolfe’s sprawling novel was in any way Dickensian.