From Lowbrow to Nobrow

From Lowbrow to Nobrow PDF Author: Peter Swirski
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 9780773530195
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
'From Lowbrow to Nobrow' vindicates popular fiction as an art form that expresses and reflects the aesthetic and social values of its readers.

From Lowbrow to Nobrow

From Lowbrow to Nobrow PDF Author: Peter Swirski
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 9780773530195
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
'From Lowbrow to Nobrow' vindicates popular fiction as an art form that expresses and reflects the aesthetic and social values of its readers.

From Lowbrow to Nobrow

From Lowbrow to Nobrow PDF Author: Peter Swirski
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773573240
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Swirski begins with a series of groundbreaking questions about the nature of popular fiction, vindicating it as an artform that expresses and reflects the aesthetic and social values of its readers. He follows his insightful introduction to the socio-aesthetics of genre literature with a synthesis of the century long debate on the merits of popular fiction and a study of genre informed by analytic aesthetics and game theory. Swirski then turns to three "nobrow" novels that have been largely ignored by critics. Examining the aesthetics of "artertainment" in Karel Capek's War with the Newts, Raymond Chandler's Playback, and Stanislaw Lem's Chain of Chance, crossover tours de force, From Lowbrow to Nobrow throws new light on the hazards and rewards of nobrow traffic between popular forms and highbrow aesthetics.

When Highbrow Meets Lowbrow

When Highbrow Meets Lowbrow PDF Author: Peter Swirski
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349951684
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
This book examines nobrow, a cultural formation that intertwines art and entertainment into an identifiable creative force. In our eclectic and culturally turbocharged world, the binary of highbrow vs. lowbrow is incapable of doing justice to the complexity and artistry of cultural production. Until now, the historical power, aesthetic complexity, and social significance of nobrow “artertainment” have escaped analysis. This book rectifies this oversight. Smart, funny, and iconoclastic, it scrutinizes the many faces of nobrow, throwing surprising light on the hazards and rewards of traffic between high entertainment and genre art.

Masscult and Midcult

Masscult and Midcult PDF Author: Dwight Macdonald
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590174682
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
A New York Review Books Original An uncompromising contrarian, a passionate polemicist, a man of quick wit and wide learning, an anarchist, a pacifist, and a virtuoso of the slashing phrase, Dwight Macdonald was an indefatigable and indomitable critic of America’s susceptibility to well-meaning cultural fakery: all those estimable, eminent, prizewinning works of art that are said to be good and good for you and are not. He dubbed this phenomenon “Midcult” and he attacked it not only on aesthetic but on political grounds. Midcult rendered people complacent and compliant, secure in their common stupidity but neither happy nor free. This new selection of Macdonald’s finest essays, assembled by John Summers, the editor of The Baffler, reintroduces a remarkable American critic and writer. In the era of smart, sexy, and everything indie, Macdonald remains as pertinent and challenging as ever.

Nobrow

Nobrow PDF Author: John Seabrook
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0375704515
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
From John Seabrook, one of our most incisive and amusing cultural critics, comes Nobrow, a fascinatingly original look at the radical convergence of marketing and culture. In the old days, highbrow was elite and unique and lowbrow was commercial and mass-produced. Those distinctions have been eradicated by a new cultural landscape where “good” means popular, where artists show their work at K-Mart, Titantic becomes a bestselling classical album, and Roseanne Barr guest edits The New Yorker: in short, a culture of Nobrow. Combining social commentary, memoir, and profiles of the potentates and purveyors of pop culture–entertainment mogul David Geffen, MTV President Judy McGrath, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Nobrow high-priest George Lucas, and others–Seabrook offers an enthralling look at our breakneck society where culture is ruled by the unpredictable Buzz and where even aesthetic worth is measured by units shipped.

A Stanislaw Lem Reader

A Stanislaw Lem Reader PDF Author: Stanisław Lem
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 081011495X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 139

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Book Description
In The Lem Reader, Peter Swirski has assembled an in-depth and insightful collection of writings by and about, and interviews with, one of the most fascinating writers of the twentieth century.

Ars Americana, Ars Politica

Ars Americana, Ars Politica PDF Author: Peter Swirski
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773537651
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
A penetrating look at modern American politics and the partisan culture that feeds off its turmoil.

American Culture, American Tastes

American Culture, American Tastes PDF Author: Michael Kammen
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307827712
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Americans have a long history of public arguments about taste, the uses of leisure, and what is culturally appropriate in a democracy that has a strong work ethic. Michael Kammen surveys these debates as well as our changing taste preferences, especially in the past century, and the shifting perceptions that have accompanied them. Professor Kammen shows how the post-traditional popular culture that flourished after the 1880s became full-blown mass culture after World War II, in an era of unprecedented affluence and travel. He charts the influence of advertising and opinion polling; the development of standardized products, shopping centers, and mass-marketing; the separation of youth and adult culture; the gradual repudiation of the genteel tradition; and the commercialization of organized entertainment. He stresses the significance of television in the shaping of mass culture, and of consumerism in its reconfiguration over the past two decades. Focusing on our own time, Kammen discusses the use of the fluid nature of cultural taste to enlarge audiences and increase revenues, and reveals how the public role of intellectuals and cultural critics has declined as the power of corporate sponsors and promoters has risen. As a result of this diminution of cultural authority, he says, definitive pronouncements have been replaced by divergent points of view, and there is, as well, a tendency to blur fact and fiction, reality and illusion. An important commentary on the often conflicting ways Americans have understood, defined, and talked about their changing culture in the twentieth century.

Highbrow, Lowbrow, Brilliant, Despicable

Highbrow, Lowbrow, Brilliant, Despicable PDF Author: The Editors of New York Magazine
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501166840
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
New York City: a battered town left for dead, one that almost a million people abandoned and where those who remained had to live behind triple deadbolt locks. It was reinvigorated and became the capital of wealth and innovation, an engine of cultural vibrancy, a magnet for immigrants, and a city of endless possibility. Since its founding in 1968, New York Magazine has told the story of that city's constant morphing, week after week. This book draws from all that coverage to present an enormous, sweeping, idiosyncratic picture of a half-century at the center of the world. It constitutes an unparalleled history of that city's transformation, and of a New York City institution as well.

Queer Pulp

Queer Pulp PDF Author: Susan Stryker
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 9780811830201
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
From homicidal homos to locked-up lesbians, and almost every sexually dangerous combination in between, Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback is the first complete expose of queer sexuality in mid-twentieth century paperbacks. Compellingly written by historian Susan Stryker, Queer Pulp gives a complete overview of the cultural, political, and economic factors involved in the boom of queer paperbacks. With chapters covering gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexually oriented books, a lively overview of the genres, and loads of scorching paperback covers, Queer Pulp reveals the complicated and fascinating history of alternative sexual literature and book publishing. Featuring the work of well-known authors such as W. Somerset Maugham and Truman Capote to the low-brow and no-brow scribes who worked under several names, Queer Pulp is the entertaining and informative introduction to these lost, salacious literary genres.