The Geography of Nowhere: Finding Oneself in the Postmodern World

A concise and very readable essay responding to the experience of living in the "postmodern condition" - that highly self-conscious state of awareness that makes it difficult to settle into a sense of confidence, certainty and purpose in life. Eberle offers a recap of the cultural and intellectual journey of Western civilization over the past several hundred years, which may be helpful to some but well-traveled territory to others (it was written in 1995, so many of his observations are fairly commonplace in pomo studies by now.) He winds up in predictable territory, invoking the teachings of Joseph Campbell and others like him, calling us to reinvest the traditional myths of our culture with meaning while also forging ahead in the understanding that fundamentalist rigidity is not in humanity's best interests. I found much to enjoy in the book - but my biggest quibble with Eberle is that he still tends to regard relativism and ambiguity as negative outcomes, which to me speaks more of his own discomfort, though I recognize that many of his readers will regard the loss of certainty and authority as disorienting or disturbing. I enjoyed reading it and would be interested in finding out where he's at nowadays, since he lives in my community, or at least he did when he wrote the book (teaching at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids MI.)

In Ebrele's "Geography of Nowhere" the reader can be guaranteed one thing--an advancement in further dialogue on postmodern thought. He may have been a bit ahead of his time when writing this one. The caliber of writing takes on concepts of postmodern thinking by intertwining historical footnotes with futurism in mind. Eberle epxplains roles of mythology, narrative and ritual in man's daily existence in a very new millennium kind of way. "Geography of Nowhere" is by no means a C.S. Lewis conversion story. What it is however, is one man's well-thought out perspective on these dynamic times.