FAKE CITY SYNDROME

by Kate Gale, Charles Rammelkamp (Editor)

This collection of essays addresses both popular culture and academic discourse. Contributors sound a cautionary note about the dumbing down of our civilization and the lack of spiritual depth in mass culture, but as these essays show, there is a spark of imaginative critical thought still brewing. These essays address race, assimilation, American civilization, and broken dreams contrasted with elusive spaces for imagination in art, literature and community. We find ourselves divining madness in American values, and sanity in progressive ideals; as we find that things that sound too fair are fantastical indeed and some that smile have in their hearts millions of mischiefs.

312 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2002

About the author

Dr. Kate Gale is managing editor of Red Hen Press, editor of the Los Angeles Review, and president of the American Composers Forum, LA. She was the 2005-2006 president of PEN USA. She is author of five books of poetry: her most recent, Mating Season, from Tupelo Press; a novel, Lake of Fire; and Rio de Sangre, a libretto for an opera with composer Don Davis. Her most recent projects include a co-written libretto, Paradises Lost with Ursula K. LeGuin and composer Stephen Taylor, and a libretto adapted from Kindred by Octavia Butler with composer Billy Childs. Her new poetry collection, Goldilocks Zone, will be released by University of New Mexico Press in February 2014. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and children.