I found this interesting, as a layperson whose function in many social situations often seems to be the person saying, "hey, cool elephant; where'd you get it?" with all of the attendant fallout.

Or, in many cases, non-fallout, because the wish not to acknowledge the elephant most certainly extends to comments about the elephant, so for example:

Me: Hey, cool elephant; where'd you get it?
Them: I've often wanted to visit India.

Me: That's neat, but isn't it hard to enjoy the new TV with the elephant in the way?
Them: My favourite show right now is Scandal. It has great reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.

Anyway. I enjoyed the book. My one caveat is the author's frankly bigoted commentary at some points. Examples:

Calling Jefferson's treatment of his slave Sally Hemings an "illicit relationship."
Stating that Bill Cosby was called out by the black community for his commentary on black youth for being too truthful, rather than for being a racist pack of lies.

Two examples of several, not all of which I can remember. Such bigotry makes this book itself part of ongoing conspiracies of silence on matters other than those he discusses, ironically, and I can't help but notice that other reviewers have failed to mention them. What is it called when book reviewers engage in a conspiracy of silence to let pass the conspiracy of silence perpetuated by the author of a book about conspiracies of silence? ( )

It's an interesting topic, certainly, but the book is crippled by its subject (how do you talk about not talking?), and the author seems aware of this -- it's less than a hundred pages. Most of the material is drawn from literary or dramatic sources rather than case studies -- The Kiss, The Emperor's New Clothes (which Zerubavel refers to constantly), Oedipus Rex -- and in fact, he never follows one example, merely referring to an incident and moving on. The pop culture references to Bills Cosby, Clinton, and Maher (there are others: The Daily Show, Downhill Racer, the 1968 Columbia riots, among many, but I couldn't resist that phrase) are useful ones, serving as points of familiarity in a discussion that frequently veers into the abstract. But I was left with a rather scattered feeling, as if the author wasn't quite sure what he wanted to say (his conclusion on page 89 is simplistic and could have been made without any of the preceeding discussion: "[C]onspiracies of silence prevent us from confronting, and consequently solving, our problems." In other news: water still wet.) and rather than narrowing his topic to something into which he could have delved, chose to pull in every reference under the sun and distract us with lots of shiny objects. The discussion of why these "conspiracies of silence" emerge is superficial, and while the idea of social politeness as a mild conspiracy of silence is an interesting one, it's not particularly new -- didn't Freud make the point? -- and could have been more integrated.

I'm also reminded of a part of Woodward & Bernstein's The Final Days, on Watergate -- the White House released heavily edited transcripts of the President's Oval Office tapes, and a congressional representative (don't recall his name; I don't have my copy on me) was quoted as saying that the transcripts, the revelations of the interior of the White House and President Nixon personally, were a "violation of the public's right not to know" -- that "that was the truly impeachable offense: letting everyone see." Zerubavel considers not at all the concept that these conspiracies of silence may be healthy, may be necessary; he doesn't question the modern belief that confession is always better.

Not impressed. This needed some genuinely scholarly treatment and far less rush. ( )

A decent, if somewhat lightweight, look at denial in American life and culture. The author spends all too much time on issues like sex (especially presidential sex) which is really no ones business to know about anyway, and all too little time on the real denial issues that are creating serious problems. Denial of reality in the face of global warming, for instance. He doesn't really talk about that sort of denial much, instead focusing mostly on denial of family issues; those are certainly important, but this book was so short there was definitely room for a great deal more meat. He did find some great quotes to start his chapters, and he utilized pop references well, so they fit smoothly into the text, and didn't look like he was trying to be "hip". Overall, a good start on an important topic, but it will almost certainly leave you wanting more. ( )