The Culture We Deserve by Jacques Barzun, Arthur Krystal
Twelve essays exploring aspects of literacy and art criticism, retrospective sociology and the effects of relativism on moral behavior. Editorial Reviews "[Mr. Barzun] is in favor of intuition, spontaneity. He is against mindless support for and glorification of artists [and] the thoughtless corruption of language."-New York Times Book Review "[Barzun's] well-crafted essays...exalt Pascal's esprit de finesse, or 'intuitive understanding.'"-Washington Post Book World "In 12 wise, stimulating essays and lectures, a noted Columbia University scholar...examines aspects of literary and art criticism, retrospective sociology, the abandonment of intelligibility [and] the effects of relativism on moral behavior."-Publishers Weekly "[Mr. Barzun] is in favor of intuition, spontaneity. He is against mindless support for and glorification of artists [and] the thoughtless corruption of language."-New York Times Book Review "It is very hard for a reviewer to do justice to a book so fertile in ideas, so challenging, so crowded with unexpected yet relevant details...The Culture We Deserve is a self-interview responding to all your queries, even the ones you were not clever enough to ask...And all this in a style that is conversational but not chatty, lucid but not dry, civilized but not highfalutin."-John Simon, The American Spectator - From the Publisher In 12 wise, stimulating essays and lectures, a noted Columbia University scholar examines today's declining culture. Ours, he observes with disgust and discernment, is a period of specialization in which the ``torrent of information'' compiled is unnecessary, in which college students are diverted to the ``minutiae of analytic methodism,'' in which the over-production of art has made us into ``gluttons who gorge and do not digest.'' Barzun examines aspects of literary and art criticism, retrospective sociology, the abandonment of intelligibility, the ``rhetoric of numbers,'' the effects of relativism on moral behavior and the differences between Art with a capital A , ``high art,'' public art and domestic art. He avers that the oversupply of fine art increases the need for subsidies; yet, although we pay farmers not to grow crops, we do not pay artists to stop making art. Still, Barzun is consoled by the realization that as long as humans exist, there is hope for ``new'' civilization and all its works. (June) - Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly Most of these dozen essays offer cultural history and polemic directed against the intellectual Establishment. Barzun laments the degree to which the humanities have lost their humanity, their moral coherence, at the hands of the professional academics. He makes a familiar case when he charges experts and systematizers with reducing history to patterns of data, literature to language, and language to a behavioral science. And he questions our patronage of the arts as he does our penchant for ``studying'' them. Many a reader, persuaded already, could feel numbed by Barzun's more sweeping indictments of modern culture. But his reputation and his powerful grasp of history will recommend this title to a variety of libraries.-- Donald Ray, Mercy Coll. Lib., Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. - Library Journal
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Binding: Paperback
Published by: Wesleyan: , 1989
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ISBN: 9780819562371 | 0819562378
200 pages.
Book Condition: Very Good
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