ZOMBIFICATION: Stories From National Public Radio ...

ZOMBIFICATION: Stories From National Public Radio by Andrei Codrescu (Picador USA/St. Martin’s Press: $12; 308 pp.). A popular commentator on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” Codrescu offers his sardonic reflections on life in America at the end of 20th Century. Regular listeners will immediately recognize the Romanian poet’s distinctive style: No other writer would describe himself as “sitting quietly at the kitchen table stirring an absent-minded cup of coffee with an indifferent spoon.” Codrescu worries that increasing numbers of Americans are abandoning rational thought for a mindless, zombie-like existence: the couch potatoes who passively absorb whatever the networks beam over the airways, and especially the so-called “Ditto Head” followers of Rush Limbaugh.