Becuz

by Daniel Horowitz

becuz is a little narration of an ego death and a bunch of people you meet. now in black and white to save some bucks.

do you find yourself asking “why?” trying to lose 5 pounds fast or make a quick buck or day hooking or losing track of your authentic self?

well it’s me here, the emotion machine and i’d like to set some things straight and also introduce you to some of my friends. when doctor Freud invented emotions in the 1890s he had no idea how popular they’d become.

oh, well here comes my physical trainer dr. Beef : he said do you ever feel what you’d call a “negative sensation?” do you ever resent yr body, which can get in the way of goodtimes? do you ever wish instead of piece of aching fishy flesh you were simply a brain in a yellowgreen jar of vinegar? you’ve had a body almost yr whole life and what of it? you barely use the thing. when yr in the shower you only scrub the highlights. of course you remember the honeymoon years, when u figured out locomotion and the uh particular brand of acupressure if-you-know-what-i-mean?

that’s what the book’s about.

what’s on the idiot box? oh, him? we keep him there because he has become addicted to corners. the news : is man a bad species? see more at 11. are we all insane? or just Charlie?

but can get off the television and just speak about the “intimate act” for a moment? the tippy top on the haunted hay ride called “human experience.”

yesterday i saw a hit flick called “while i’m naked” in the genre of “help! i’m a teenage werewolf/alcoholic!” and it got me thinking. i took my very illustrated kama sutra off the wall and then you may have noticed i never came back. . .

okay it’s me the emotion machine speaking now you may have noticed my exhaust has turned black. no it does not mean i have not decided on the new pope. it’s much worse.

yes, it’s me, the emotion machine. do you feel it yet? i have a scale model of the human heart in my office but i think there was a mistake at the factory cuz the coin slot seems a tad too big. but let me tell you about my predecessor, The Poet : he faked his death. and then he didn’t move eat drink blink or speak for 70 years until he died.

102 pages, Paperback

Published November 25, 2015

About the author

Daniel Horowitz is a historian whose work focuses on the history of consumer culture and social criticism in the U.S. At Smith College (1989–2012), he directed the American studies program for 18 years and was, for a time, Sylvia Dlugasch Bauman Professor of American Studies. Before coming to Smith, he taught at Scripps College in Claremont, California (1972–88), where he eventually was Nathaniel Wright Stephenson Professor of History and Biography.
For 2010–11, he was the Ray A. Billington Visiting Professor of U.S. History at Occidental College and Huntington Library. He has also taught at the University of Michigan (1983–84), Carleton College (1980), Harvard (1964–66 and 1967–70), Skidmore College (1970–72), and Wellesley College (1966–67).
Among the honors Horowitz has received are two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and one from the National Humanities Center; an appointment as Honorary Visiting Fellow at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Harvard University; and for 2008–09 he received a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 1997, the American Studies Association awarded him the Constance Rourke Prize for his 1996 article “Rethinking Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique: Labor Union Radicalism and Feminism in Cold War America,” American Quarterly. The American Studies Association awarded him its 2003 Mary C. Turpie Prize for “outstanding abilities and achievement in American Studies teaching, advising, and program development at the local or regional level.”
Among his publications are The Morality of Spending: Attitudes Toward the Consumer Society in America, 1875–1940 (1985), selected by Choice as one of the outstanding academic books of 1985; Vance Packard and American Social Criticism (1994); Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique: The American Left, The Cold War, Modern Feminism (1998); The Anxieties of Affluence: Critiques of American Consumer Culture, 1939–1979 (2004), selected by Choice as one of the outstanding books of 2004 and winner of the Eugene M. Kayden Prize for the best book published in the humanities in 2004 by a university press; Consuming Pleasures: Intellectuals and Popular Culture in the Postwar World (2012); On the Cusp: Yale College Class of 1960 and a World on the Verge of Change (2015); and Happier?: The History of A Cultural Movement That Aspired to Transform America (2018).
His book on the Reality TV show “Shark Tank” will be published by University of North Carolina Press in late 2020. He has edited two books for Bedford: Suburban Life in the 1950s: Selections from Vance Packard’s Status Seekers (1995) and Jimmy Carter and the Energy Crisis of the 1970: The “Crisis of Confidence” Speech of July 15, 1979.