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Dictionary of Idiocy: And Other Matters of Opinion
Author(s): Gustave Flaubert (Author)
- Publisher: Gibson Square Books Ltd
- Publication Date: 17 Nov. 2003
- Language: English
- Print length: 196 pages
- ISBN-10: 1903933374
- ISBN-13: 9781903933374
Book Description
This volume provides a light-hearted guide for the perplexed to all things trivial. Wittgenstein said that if people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever happen. As human progress depends on the continuing practice of stupidity, Stephen Bayley investigates in this book what is necessary for human progress. Some instances of stupidity are only clearly stupid after the fact such as the astonishing amount of money poured into Internet start-ups, others rely on ideas which are stupid on their own. Starting its journey with the Medieval writer Sebastian Brandt, who wrote “The Ship of Follies of the World” in 1509, even the perplexed will find their way through the maze of progress and common sense. An original miscellany for those who want their trivia served up with panache. The inspiration for this collection comes from Flaubert’s “Dictionnaire des Idees Recues”, published for the first time in October 1904.
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Starting life as an Art Historian, Stephen Bayley created the first interest in design as a subject of serious study. He has since become an outstpoken opinion maker on art, design and culture. He is a contributing editor of Esquire, a regular critic on television, and a helplessly prolific contributor to all national newspapers and magazines. Resigning from the Dome project as its red tape lengthened, he is fascinated by useless gadgets and once likened using Mercedes’s radar-navigation as the nearest to becoming a smart-bomb.
