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Adventures in Bad Behavior
Metropolis Books
September 2010
On Sale: August 31, 2010
224 pages
ISBN: 0805089799
EAN: 9780805089790
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
We all relish a good scandal—the larger the figure
(governor, judge) and more shocking the particulars
(diapers, cigars)—the better. But why do people feel
compelled to act out their tangled psychodramas on the
national stage, and why do we so enjoy watching them,
hurling our condemnations while savoring every lurid detail? With "pointed daggers of prose" (The New Yorker), Laura
Kipnis examines contemporary downfall sagas to lay bare the
American psyche: what we desire, what we punish, and what we
disavow. She delivers virtuoso analyses of four paradigmatic
cases: a lovelorn astronaut, an unhinged judge, a venomous
whistleblower, and an over-imaginative memoirist. The motifs
are classic—revenge, betrayal, ambition, madness—though the
pitfalls are ones we all negotiate daily. After all, every
one of us is a potential scandal in the making: failed
self-knowledge and colossal self-deception—the necessary
ingredients—are our collective plight. In How to Become a
Scandal, bad behavior is the entry point for a brilliant
cultural romp as well as an anti-civics lesson. "Shove your
rules," says scandal, and no doubt every upright citizen,
deep within, cheers the transgression—as long as it's
someone else's head on the block.
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