A friend was nice enough to bring me some reading material for my hospital stay, and after having exhausted issues of Bananafish, Unsound and Muckraker, I bit the bullet and settled down with Standing In Two Circles, and though I've read many of the articles elsewhere, I must say that writing is NOT Mr. Rice's forte. The article on Savitri Devi has at least four paragraphs that lead with "Whether you love her or hate her, agree or disagree..." and leaves you feeling like you've just read a schoolboy's book report.
The ' Dystopia' article is even worse, I don't think I've read it, though an abridged version does appear in Apocalypse Culture 2. He makes so many assumptions about Darwinian evolution that are so pedestrian, not to mention patently false, that it's obvious that he has no real understanding of Darwin's work. Darwin didn't posit an arrow of evolution, that's an earlier idea that Darwin, as an abolitionist sought to disprove. Spencer used the term "survival of the fittest" after reading Darwin, but meant it in a way that was inline with his earlier economic theories. Darwin picked it up, but Darwinian fitness isn't generally understood along the same lines.
Also, and I understand it is a somewhat older essay, but to call Freud the "father of modern psychology" hints that he has absolutely no understanding of what modern psychology is. Freud's literary/metaphorical understanding of the psyche has long been left behind by objective science wrought from statistical analysis, neuro-imaging, etc. I still think that Freud is relevant in some regards, but Mr. Rice, in trying to seem intelligent, ends up bragging of his ignorance.
