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Title: nostalgia for a bucolic utopia
Review: From a writer with a progressive reputation, this book was disappointing. Sabato rails humourlessly against modern mass media, showing no conception that tools like the Internet can be put to positive use. We're ponderously told that our present crisis is due to `exploitation of man', as if that's insightful, or specific to our age. He yearns for times past when, supposedly, people `worked at a more human level' and `were freer than the man of today'. In our own hopeless age it's supposedly impossible to transmit values to new generations. Even smallpox eradication is decried as making room for cancer. Reminiscent of William Morris, Sabato looks forward to returning to the Middle Ages (`una nueva Edad Media'), which he thinks would be curative (`sanante'). I'm currently reading Galeano's Patas Arriba, looking for a vision of how to improve the future, not return to an imaginary past.
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