It is important to be clear about the somewhat complex brief Conrad has set himself, because, to a large extent, it subverts certain obvious criticisms. For example, he devotes a chapter to Charlie Chaplin, but never once mentions Buster Keaton. Keaton and Tarkovsky are the greater artists, but there is more, in this context, to be said about Chaplin and Dali. The brief makes this comprehensible, but it is, at least, odd. A further oddity is Conrad's arm's-length handling of popular culture.
Mass art is, for most commentators, one of the defining features of the twentieth century.
Yet Conrad is cool on the subject. His chapter on Japan deals at length with the exotica of love hotels and pachinko parlours, but elsewhere pop culture only appears sporadically and is usually filtered through the sensibility of evidently 'high' artists like Andy Warhol or Billy Wilder. These would all be serious criticisms if this book were intended as a survey of modern creativity. But it is not. It is an evocation of the state of mind of a highly intelligent, highly learned man at the end of the twentieth century.