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Scott Timberg on Creative Destruction

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Reading in the Digital Age, and Cassandra Wilson

May 2, 2014 by Scott Timberg

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="dHp9P0RkCZ3f7i5yDaz9hEWZeYiwNVGG"] WHAT happens to us when we read on an electronic device? Does it alter our ability to connect with a nuanced piece of fiction? Two recent stories get into these questions from opposite angles. I wrote about this a few weeks ago, and the conversation still rages. This reported story from the Washington Post makes clear that … [Read more...]

Is Art Therapy? And, the Madness of Eddie Izzard

May 1, 2014 by Scott Timberg

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="vfSOI90RO2KEYpq5eSwBZ2d7FDDUHrCx"] IT may be an unanswerable question, but it's one I've been brooding on a lot lately: To what extent is art a disinterested inquiry -- the search for some kind of human truth -- and to what extent does it offer some kind of extra benefit that soothes artist or audience? That issue, which I'll get into more fully in an upcoming … [Read more...]

Is Cable TV’s Heyday Over? And, Guitarists’ Brains

April 30, 2014 by Scott Timberg

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="3RwcvvUk1AC4BkVM7TnYA96GH4qbLhTJ"] SOMEWHERE between consensus and cliche is the idea that television is better than ever and has reached a new depth and intelligence. To optimists, The Wire, Homeland, Mad Men and so on show what's possible even in these difficult times for culture. My sense, as I looked into various economic models for Salon, here, is that the … [Read more...]

A Return in Minnesota, and Kushner and Rodrick in Paperback

April 29, 2014 by Scott Timberg

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="9ERXa4nuBab6v5CPcvsEksqMFVDobHPt"] ONE of the unpleasant recent developments in classical music -- the 16 month (!) lockout of the musicians in the Minnesota Orchestra -- may be resolving. But it may not go entirely smoothly. A report just today from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune describes newly restored music director Osmo Vanska. “We are terribly behind and must do … [Read more...]

Announcing Culture Crash the Book; and Kylie the Appalling

April 28, 2014 by Scott Timberg

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="ftixoeOJRzszHlmMuaxS6xpP6qUMIuEH"] EAGER for more of the uplifting optimism of the CultureCrash blog? Then you'll love my upcoming book, Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class, which Yale University Press has just formally announced. Here is the press's page. The book is about a crisis in the arts and culture, one provoked by digital technology, changing … [Read more...]

Looking Ahead With Astra Taylor, Tallest Tree; and Rushdie

April 25, 2014 by Scott Timberg

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="kNYZhxkhTXTFf6ORXY8ykY6cNtaDGWj8"] THE other day I spoke to Astra Taylor, a documentary filmmaker who was involved in the Occupy movement, about her new book The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age. I'll be writing about her more fully shortly, but for now I'll just say this is one of the best books on the impact of digital technology … [Read more...]

Can Impulse Records Come Back? Plus, Shakespeare’s Acting

April 24, 2014 by Scott Timberg

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="BkttmRWC0b2xNNu3idGGaZviRdyibZxn"] ONE of the most storied of all jazz labels, Impulse -- "The House Trane Built" -- may provide that rarest of things: Good news for the jazz world. In hibernation for a while, and decades from its leadership of the avant-garde in the '60s, Impulse is being revived and will begin releasing new music. Now part of Universal Music … [Read more...]

Does Literary Fiction Exist? And, James Franco

April 23, 2014 by Scott Timberg

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="g3odon0mIwRtjJWQanUkJ6akwgtLE0cd"] IS "literary fiction" just another genre? Over the years I've engaged in numerous discussions with writers, fans, and fellow journalists on the matter. Generally I've been sympathetic to the side that says that demeaned genres -- science fiction and hardboiled detective fiction especially -- can be as smart, well-written and … [Read more...]

Visual Art and Piketty’s “Capital,” and David Mitchell

April 22, 2014 by Scott Timberg

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="38DeNwZGJisbGbTELS20TK8CUWph1kUR"] CULTURE and economics are connected, of course, in all kinds of ways, some simple, some complex. I often muse on the question of how rising income inequality relates to the arts, specifically the art market. A new story gets at some of it, using Capital in the Twenty-First Century, French economist Thomas Piketty's bestseller, as … [Read more...]

Housing for Artists, Upcoming Doc and What Twain Tells Us

April 21, 2014 by Scott Timberg

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="hLRQi16APGHGAa7vr6agsGJdgdO8X6ef"] IT’S taken a while, but as rents and real estate prices have surged over the last few years, the issue of living space for artists has started to get the attention it deserves; David Byrne and Patti Smith have helped shine a light on the plight of creative folk in New York. A new story by fiction writer Catherine Lacey highlights … [Read more...]

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Scott Timberg

I'm a longtime culture writer and editor based in Los Angeles; my book "CULTURE CRASH: The Killing of the Creative Class" came out in 2015. My stories have appeared in The New York Times, Salon and Los Angeles magazine, and I was an LA Times staff writer for six years. I'm also an enthusiastic if middling jazz and indie-rock guitarist. (Photo by Sara Scribner) Read More…

Culture Crash, the Book

My book came out in 2015, and won the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award. The New Yorker called it "a quietly radical rethinking of the very nature of art in modern life"

I urge you to buy it at your favorite independent bookstore or order it from Portland's Powell's.

Culture Crash

Here is some information on my book, which Yale University Press published in 2015. (Buy it from Powell's, here.) Some advance praise: With coolness and equanimity, Scott Timberg tells what in less-skilled hands could have been an overwrought horror story: the end of culture as we have known … [Read More...]

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