Dorian Lynskey is a very good culture writer, partly because, although left-leaning he’s scrupulously fair in a world full of NME-style, Hunter S Thompson impersonators. Careful liberal doubt works much better in culture than it does in politics. He’s also very good because he gets it about right when it comes to how important culture is.
Culture is an essential frippery. No one lives or dies on its progress and yet it informs everything we do, especially when you regard culture in its broadest forms, language, manners etc.
Lack of access to culture is a good indicator of poverty. The link here is an illustration (a small illustration) of the frustrating paradox of our society. We live in a world of such plenty, yet so often so many people are not able to access it. In the case of the author, who is firmly middle-class, it is poverty of time, so many books to read but little opportunity read them.
No one wants to end up fretting over first-world problems (like becoming a parent who has mistaken themselves for a film studies undergraduate) but it's worth asking, who are these cultural riches for?
No one wants to end up fretting over first-world problems (like becoming a parent who has mistaken themselves for a film studies undergraduate) but it's worth asking, who are these cultural riches for?
The X number of things to Y before you die phenomenon is a class assertion, people with the time and the money (33 Revolutions Per Minute by Dorian Lynskey, recommended retail price £17.99 - cheap for some, I guess) to enjoy the legacy of 6,000 years of human endeavour. The end extreme is How to Spend It- the Financial Times “website of worldly pleasures”, for people presumably who people who’re so rich who’ve been through consumerism and come out the other side… How to spend it, indeed!
All this is without even getting to the question of whether a society that defines itself by the consumption of artifacts is a healthy society. Modern day hipsters are not creative by and large but 'creative' consumers.