Finley Offers Nothing We Haven't Heard Before

Enough is Enough

by Karen Finley

Poseidon Press, 14.00

In Enough is Enough: Weekly meditations for Living Dysfunctionally, Karen Finley turns pop psychology and accepted rules of etiquette on their heads in a cutesy way that begins to grate after about five pages.

Finley is a multimedia artist best known as one of 1990s "NEA Five," the five performance artists whose work was deemed so controversial that the National Endowment for the Arts rescinded their funding. With this fluffy little book, as indeed with all her projects, she seems determined to knock over as many sacred cows as she can lay her hands on--and have a jolly good time, to boot! Good for her. But Enough is Enough, a slim volume of jocular ripostes interspersed with Finley's childlike line drawings, is the most standard and facile anti-establishment fare imaginable.

Finley's strategy is to say "no" to anything that conventional mores say "yes" to, and vice-versa: probably a good idea in general, but nothing we haven't heard before. Little gems like, "Whining is a useful technique for getting your own way, because people will just want to shut you up and will give you just about anything," appear designed to provoke first a raised eyebrow and a burst of scandalized laughter, and then a self-indulgent rethinking of how we conduct our quotidian existences.

Well, it's not like it hasn't occurred to most of us that it might be fun and interesting to do the opposite of what we're supposed to do once in a while. Most of us have probably even done it. So Finley's book is not going to be liberating for anyone, especially since for the most part it will be preaching to the converted.

Enough is Enough falls short even of giving us a half-hour's good time, which might be its only point (to the tune of $14, mind you). Finley's self-satisfied and almost preachy bucking of convention gets really old really fast. "If there is something that you don't want to do, don't waste your time trying to confront the source of your apprehension, or spend time trying to figure out why you can't deal with doing something--simply make up an excuse and be done with it," she writes. This accompanies her illustration of a woman saying to a little girl, "Dear, don't ever say you forgot. Show some manners and make an excuse!" If Finley expects anyone to find this sort of easy shot original or audacious, she's got another think coming. Societal norms are a cheap target in this day and age, and the construction of post-modern neologisms has been hackneyed for decades. Hey, Karen: enough is enough.