Bloom's Morning: Coffee Comforters and the Secret Meaning of Everyday Life

Coffee comforters king-sized beds gel toothpaste razors underwear the morning shower—all activities and objects we have tended to pay no attention to—until the publication of this book. In a series of short vignettes endearingly illustrated by the author Arthur Asa Berger gives Americans a profound way to understand their morning rituals. Have you ever considered for instance that the digital clock by producing free-floating liquid numerals disconnecting us from both time past and time future could be interpreted as a metaphor for the alienation many people feel in contemporary society? Or consider our nightclothes: The pajama is the most immediate witness to our sexual activities; thus we cover our pajamas with a bathrobe to guard against the anxiety of being revealed to other family members. The pajama is intricately connected to human shame.Bloom’s Morning with thirty-six short chapters bracketed by brief essays on the nature of semiotic analysis is a perfect book for the inquisitive mind. It is chock-full of valuable and quirky nuggets from this most interesting of social commentators—items that taken together give us a new vision through which to understand ourselves.