Despite having the wrong title, this wonderful collection of essays about contemporary American life is not only thought-provoking but also a pedigree version of that rarest beast, ¡°the public understanding of the humanities¡±. American academic Mark Greif is a founder of the journal N+1, a venue for the ¡°unknown¡± to say things ¡°as yet unsaid¡± that aims to ¡°publish a kind of literature that didn¡¯t exist elsewhere¡± (imagine the London Review of Books but actually interesting and fun). Here, he mixes the autobiographical and the philosophical (the ¡°literary theoretical¡±, say) in a way I wish more British writers did.

The range of topics ¨C exercise, pop music, television, politics ¨C is consciously constrained because, as Greif writes, it¡¯s a ¡°book of critique of things I do¡±. Underneath a fox-like curiosity in the seeming ephemera of popular culture is a hedgehog concern with how we experience all these and what that experience means. Inspired by Thoreau ¨C and drawing on the philosopher Stanley Cavell and others ¨C Greif uses his everyday experience, and the shared experiences of his segment of his generation, as the stimulus for thought: trying to live up to his childhood idea of Thoreau: ¡°I knew a ¡®philosopher¡¯ to be a mind that was unafraid to be against everything. Against everything, if it was corrupt, dubious, enervating, untrue to us, false to happiness.¡± But ¨C the wrong title ¨C Greif¡¯s essays aren¡¯t really ¡°against¡± and oppositional. Instead, they work through the experience of doing to find something more complex and luminous.

For example, he teaches himself (in private) to rap: ¡°I really didn¡¯t know how hard it would be¡­until I tried¡±: his first model, 17 syllables in two bars (in contrast to Elvis¡¯ ¡°well, that¡¯s alright Mama¡±, six in two bars). The lesson: rap¡¯s a ¡°more difficult and complex lyrical art in performance than just about anything that has ever been known to rock¡±, which leads out to learning both big and small things about his experience as a white American. Seeing the great punk band Fugazi (if Adorno were a band, he¡¯d be Fugazi) is a sort of doing, a commitment. This constant investigation of experience is highlighted in four essays subtitled ¡°The meaning of life¡±, which analyse the need constantly to work out how we ¡°experience experience¡±, even or especially of the mundane.

Very occasionally, the desire for elegant prose overcomes the content (country music is about ¡°getting by¡±; rap about ¡°getting over¡±; rock about ¡°getting free¡±, hmm). And, rightly, one doesn¡¯t always agree: where Greif finds in Radiohead a glimmer of ¡°the politics of the next age¡­the recreation of privacy¡±, I find (apart from the album The Bends) the sort of knowing, public performance of introversion that begins charmingly but soon becomes unbearably irritating.

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But this is how academics and intellectuals ought to write for the (mythical) general reader. On the one hand, Greif never claims a final authoritative voice: it¡¯s provisional, exploratory, it doesn¡¯t talk down or teach. On the other, it¡¯s unembarrassed about citing Plato or Walter Benjamin, or about articulating something that¡¯s difficult. We often talk about the public understanding of the humanities: here is Greif, actually doing it.

Robert Eaglestone is professor of contemporary literature and thought, Royal Holloway University of London.

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Against Everything: On Dishonest Times
By Mark Greif
Verso, 320pp, ?16.99
ISBN 9781784785925 and 5949 (e-book
Published 26 September 2016