Supergrow: Essays and Reports on Imagination in America

S"upergrow is a collection of fifteen essays that appeared between 1966 and 1969 in publications such as the "American Scholar, the "New York Times, Antioch Review, Esquire, and the "Saturday Review. Author Benjamin DeMott discusses everything under the sun--music, improving one's sex life, violence in Mississippi, theater, student revolts--but a single theme unifies the material: people ought to use their imaginations more. The book starts from the assumption that our troubles stem from failures of the imagination. Overcome by mass media, we are often too oblivious to fresh and original ideas. As DeMott states, ..".the right use of the constructive imagination increases the effectiveness of our energies, enables people to anticipate moves and countermoves, prevents them from becoming frozen into postures of intransigence or martyrdom which, though possessing a 'terrible beauty, ' have as their main consequence the stiffening of resistance and the slowing of change." "Supergrow is a sociological and political critique of various aspects of everyday life in Amer