Description: By exposing and elaborating the historical poetics of kitsch, My Silver Planet transforms our sense of kitsch as a category of material culture.
Brief description: Daniel Tiffany is a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Southern California. He is the author of nine books of poetry and literary theory, including Infidel Poetics: Riddles, Nightlife, Substance and Neptune Park. He has also published translations of texts by Sophocles and the Italian poet Cesare Pavese, as well as Georges Bataille's pornographic tale, Madame Edwarda. He is a recipient of a Whiting Fellowship and the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin.
Review Quotes: Tiffany is persuasive in arguing that the now ubiquitous idea of 'kitsch' originates in poetry, poetic language, and the articulated views of many players in the greater culture . . . The value of the book lies in application: understanding the origins of poetic 'kitsch' allows one to understand elite culture better and to use that knowledge as a link between elite culture and vernacular culture.
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