The latest craze (Alex Shakar)
' All the rage' (Engl. "The Savage Girl") is a 2001 published novel by American author Alex Shakar , whose central theme is the pursuit of art student Ursula Van Urden for the next big trend.
Summary
The question of the next hype , "the next big thing", occupies the trendspotters of "Tomorrow, Ltd.", a trend scouting agency based in the fictional US city of Middle City, which is always threatened by volcanic eruptions . Your business is to have a nose for the future. Following the instruction to find the future and bring it to the agency, the protagonists penetrate deeper and deeper into the world of advertising and perfected commercialism - and discovers a mysterious, self-sufficient homeless person, the "Savage Girl", in which Ursula believes to recognize the embodiment of the ultimate trend. She starts an advertising campaign for “Diet Water” - low-calorie mineral water.
Other aspects of the novel
Beyond the main line of the narrative, the author exemplifies numerous questions that revolve around questions of popular culture , commerce , commercialization and their social consequences: How to react to the overwhelming demands of people through irony and cynicism , an unhealthy excess of irony became the earth's atmosphere dismiss? Is the nascent era of post-irony the appropriate resolution? Doesn't every product to be sold have a paradoxical essence, the so-called “parade essence”? Can the culture industry embrace this?
expenditure
- 2001, USA, HarperCollins, ISBN 0-06-620987-0
- 2001, UK, Scribner, ISBN 0-7432-0724-6
- 2002, USA, HarperPerennial, ISBN 0-06-093523-5
- 2002, Germany (“The Last Scream”), Rowohlt, ISBN 3-499-23175-1