In the 19th century Matthew Arnold wrote that all literature is a criticism of life. Maintaining that this still holds true today, the first section of "The Joker is Wild" is a collection of essays on literature, culture and society which casts a sharply critical eye on some of our most cherished orthodoxies. The second section consists of thirty-five poems, some of which follow the same line. The essays cover a wide range of subjects which includes in "The Joker is Wild" a penetrating analysis of the unique attributes of the novel and how modern society and culture are inimical to it. Our enslavement to machine-worship, truth versus political correctness, a new look at the age-old battle of the sexes - nothing is spared under the author's ruthless Orwellian eye. The poems form a kind of parallel connection to the essays. Keeping faithful to Arnold's maxim, and using language that conforms to "the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty", they tackle such controversial topics as overpopulation, the tyranny of the camera, and take a sardonic look at the condition of English culture in "England Needs You". There are also poems dealing with more personal issues such as depression and failure. Altogether a fascinating miscellany, this book offers, in the author's words, "an idiosyncratic world view, resting on certain propositions that may seem disturbingly strange, even shocking to the reader."