In general, Shields casts himself as an alienated, covetous nerd who’s wondering why we’re all such alienated, covetous nerds, why we’re so obsessed with celebrities when they make us even more depressed about “our unamplified little lives.” Roving far and wide in the pop-culture universe, Shields weighs in on the erotic power of women who wear glasses (“The arrogance implied in believing that one’s beauty can afford to be concealed is entrancing”), and on his quest to obtain a genuine Boy Scout belt: “I go so far as to schedule an interview for a troop leader position, until, fearing accusations of pedophilia, I end the charade.” He’s at his best during a bizarre meditation on the work of character actor Bob Balaban, who’s popped up in everything from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” to “Seinfeld.” The piece is so serious and minutely detailed that it becomes a parody of celebrity journalism: “What is Bob Balaban, anyway, a professional punching bag What indignity will the movies not subject him to? What indignity will he not accept?”
The answer, presumably, is that Balaban will suffer any indignity as long as he can be in the movies. And that we all would. “Remote” makes of charmingly fish-eyed points about our strange desires. Still, nothing here is brilliant enough to stop you dead in your tracks. And the futuristically formless nature of the collection gets irritating: it’s an ambivalent comment on bookmaking, and before long it’s got us feeling ambivalent too. Once, publishers would likely have balked at an oddball collection like “Remote.” Now, oddball books are in vogue, and Shields’s publisher can go after the audience that reads irreverent postmodernists like Nicholson Baker, Mark Leyner and Douglas Coupland. Why not? There aren’t many audiences left.
