1092 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE consumerism but questions their Whiggish application of contempo rary morality to the past. Two essays follow summarizing McCracken’s own work. One explores patina as a reinforcer ofstatus before the con sumerrevolution enthroned the conceptofnovelty. The other discusses a contemporary woman whose curatorial attitude toward a large col lection of heirlooms and use of them as mnemonic emblems of family history offer McCracken a window onto premodern consumer con sciousness. The second section, “Theory,” contains two chapters that succeed separately but do not provide a general theory. The first, an essay on clothing as language, arguesagainst the popularlanguage met aphor of cultural analysis by proving that we typically “read” an indi vidual’s clothes for a sense of his or her essence not in linear sequence, as with words, but as a simultaneously perceived field. The second, which McCracken describes as the linchpin of his book, describes how meaning is transferred from the world in general to specific consumer goods and then to the individual consumer, who in a sense then returns it transformed to the larger world. The third section, devoted to “Practice,” contains four essays that, although provocative in their own right, do not contribute to proving the linchpin theory. These final chapters cover such topics as gender construction and consumption (women’s “dress-for-success” look as an example of a rehabilitated trickle-down theory), continual acts of consumption as bridges to meaning displaced for security’s sake into the future, and the so-called Diderot effect (the drive for harmony among one’s possessions, which initially prevents people from con suming beyond their means but finally drives them to replace everything in order to harmonize with a single upscale acquisition). As this summary indicates, McCracken contributes perceptively to cur rent debate on consumer culture, but his work suffers by promising more than it delivers. Jeffrey L. Meikle Dr. Meikle is associate professor of American studies and art history at the University of Texas at Austin. Arguments in Favor of Sharpshooting. By David Clarke. Portland, Ore.: Timber Press (9999 SW Wilshire 97225), 1985. Pp. 140; illustra tions, bibliography, index. $19.95. Here is one ofthose newfangled books that comes with an instruction manual—author’s notes in which David Clarke (who teaches architec ture at Southern Illinois University) explains how this collection of essays—most previously published—may be read. One way is as Bildungs-roman, documenting thejourney ofa “typical” architect, from youthful distress with the sterility of the International Style, to an un derstanding of the European origins of the contemporary “crisis” in TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 1093 architecture (of which International Style is a symptom), to a vision of alternative modes ofarchitectural practice through “sharpshooting”— the solving of particular problems as they arise rather than the attempt to “solve” architecture-as-problem through theory, abstract statement, and the construction ofalgorithms. But Clarke also believes that he has a sense of the needs of architecture and a schema to explain why those needs have sometimes not been fulfilled, so another way is as a contri bution to architectural theory through abstract statement and the con struction of algorithms. I am not sure one can have it both ways. I am also not convinced that republication of old essays makes a Bildungsroman (who among us has not produced documents “of our own time”), and I am not persuaded that his analysis of the origins of the crisis in architecture is correct. Nonetheless, the issues underlying his analysis are impor tant and the ways he addresses them symptomatic, hence worth noting. Instruction manuals have now become commonplace as marketing tools, providing consumers with an “extra” product that enhances the attractiveness of the item they support and sometimes—as in the notable case of the Pet Rock—transforming a marginal product into a best-seller. They now accompany high-tech equipment but also lowtech equipment (hammers, eggbeaters), several lines of women’s and unisex clothing and outerwear (“to separate liner from the shell. . .”), prepared foods, processed and unprocessed foods (pie crusts, corn chips, poultry), and books. In all cases their existence signifies the essential (or potential) illegibility of the product as tool...