Essay
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
2015
Hardback
227
AU $35.00
I don’t mean to be alarmist or anything, but I have some terrible news. Culture. It’s… dead. It’s dead, Jim!
How do I know? Well, Mario Vargas Llosa told me so, and as the bastion of all that is Good and Right and Noble in this world, he should know. Oh, how he laments the loss of glorious enlightemnent ideals, aesthetic art and literature. A time when intellectuals were given their proper value, listened to and affecting the way society operated. A time, you see, that only exists in the misted eyes and rose-tinted glasses of the privileged few. Because apparently any kind of mass culture, any non-western-based culture, is just not worth your time. And forget about the devilish Internet or about any kind of Islamic culture. I mean really. Really. Continue reading