Short on Wit and Wisdom

TAKE MY ADVICE

Letters to the Next Generation From People Who Know

a Thing or Two

Edited by James L. Harmon

Simon & Schuster

254 pages, $18

“Take My Advice” is based on the zany premise that a grab bag of people between, say, 25 and 50 will have something useful and interesting to say to the class of 2002 as it steps out into the world.

To that end, James L. Harmon has, over the last 10 years, assembled this collection of pontificating essays from a group of, as his publisher says, “major thinkers, social gadflies, underground artists, provocateurs, raconteurs, film auteurs, cyberpunks, academic outlaws, icons, iconoclasts, cranks, visionaries, fashionistas, cultural critics and our greatest living poets.” The goal is to create “a subversively witty book destined for cult status among discerning, critical and savvy young people around the world.”

Beware of the wit who announces he is now going to be witty. Cast a skeptical eye on the book that brashly aspires to “cult status.” Hailed too soon, it may turn out to be a dud.

“Take My Advice” is a dud. Worse, it is a pompous and boring dud. True, among the 78 essays and prose snippets there are a few worthwhile pieces. Martha Nussbaum, the respected University of Chicago professor of philosophy, in a couple of pages delivers some sound if unexceptionable words of wisdom, as befits a philosopher: “Do not despise your inner world ... We are all going to encounter illness, loss and aging, and we’re not well prepared for these inevitable events by a culture that directs us to think of externals only, and to measure ourselves in terms of our possession of externals.”

With her little essay Nussbaum provided an amusingly sultry snapshot of herself as a college freshman. Joe Dallesandro, however, appears in an unamusingly sultry photograph of himself as an apparently naked actor, a role he performed in various states of undress in Andy Warhol films. His essay, which goes on for about six pages, is titled “If You Have to Be Beautiful.” “Beauty,” he says, apparently speaking for himself, “is fun. It has its place. But don’t mistake it for self-worth.”

The writer Camille Paglia contributed seven pages of 50 quotations, ranging from Julius Caesar’s “I came, I saw, I conquered” to Jesus’ “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God, the things that are God’s”; from Lewis Carroll to Oscar Wilde to Rhett Butler: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” These quotes, she solemnly writes, “fascinated me in my student years and still echo in my mind like bossy voices from the beyond.” She does not appear to be trying to make a funny spoof of her assignment.

At the end of his nine pages, Bruce LaBruce, a filmmaker and writer, concludes, “I’m still the reluctant pornographer, but in this era of rampant assimilationism and gay conservatism, I see pornography as the last refuge of gay radicalism.”

Poet Rita Dove advises: “Read to advise yourself that you are not alone. And stay curious.” The activist John Zerzan reports a Sun Microsystem scientist’s conclusions that, in 30 years, genetic engineering, nanotechnology and robotics will become fully self-replicating. “Come alive, and fight back!” Zerzan exhorts.

And, among the contributions, the inscription at the Delphic oracle, “Know Thyself,” makes more than one appearance in “Take My Advice.” It turns out that this cult book is just another college graduation speech, a Polonius trying to be hip.