Charles Paul Freund makes interesting and provocative mention of my middlebrow posting from last week (see below, ad infinitum) in “Reading for NoBrows,” a piece written for Reason‘s Web site which you can read by clicking here:
The underlying conceit of the middlebrow phenomenon–that cultural choices should be understood as cultural duties–made gatekeepers more than useful; it made them necessary. Middlebrow adherents, in their attempts at achieving well-roundedness, often spread themselves notably thin, listening to, say, Third Stream Jazz, attending exhibits of Abstract Expressionism, watching enigmatic Bergman movies, sitting through eventless Beckett plays, etc. This entailed a lot of heavy lifting, intellectually speaking, and gatekeepers could greatly ease the trial by telling you not only what works were worth your while, but also what they meant. It was the age of the influential critic, to whom culture consumers often yielded power in exchange for guidance….
Good or bad, however, middlebrow’s eclipse is such that even its basic forms–such as greatest-ever lists–are now at the service of post-middlebrow values.
If I may mix my metaphors, Freund and I may not be quite on the same page, but we’re in the same ballpark.