Becoming a cultured person, “just like NYC intellectuals”

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Read the New York Times every day, The Atlantic, and the New Yorker. You can add to that list but that would get you a long way.

This is good advice. I grew up middle class and pretty broke in the Midwest. My parents longed for a different life and we got the Sunday NYT, the Atlantic and the New Yorker at home. This was back in the heyday of magazines so we also had stacks of fashion magazines and Vanity Fair. We also watched CBS Sunday Morning before church. That all gave me a glimpse into a different world and the ability to slip into college and my first job in NYC with a little bit of camouflage.

Nowadays culture is so driven by money that I would only bother because you want your kids to know and learn, not because you want to equip them to be part of certain worlds. Those worlds are mostly gone.

I don’t think being cultured will give my kid any tangible advantage, that’s for sure.
I value being a cultured person (in a broad sense, from music to current events) in and of itself and I just hope my son will also take pride in being well-read and all around knowledgeable one day.
-OP

OP, I’m legitimately inspired that you care.

I take a lot of pride in being well-read and all-around knowledgeable, but I’ll be the first to say that it’s an increasingly lonely or even scoffed-at effort. My child’s fancy private school is overrun by real estate investors and developers, tech execs, and other new millennium white collar jobs. I go to book clubs in the neighborhood and only 2-3 of us ever read the books. The parent pushback about teaching the basics of literature, arts and even history is constant. I grew up in an era and place when white collar=doctor and lawyer, and parents read books and multiple newspapers daily, and could help us with history and English homework. Now anyone who even has time to read a book is seen as antisocial or an underemployed slacker.

It makes me sad for where we’re at now.

Thank you so much for your kind words, PP!
How is it possible to be in a book club and not read the books? I mean, isn’t the whole point to discuss them?
Also, why do parents push back on literature and arts? I thought the whole point of being at a private school was to get some tried and true basics of humanities (since in public many things are too “progressive”, at least in the blue states).
I don’t know if you are open to it, but if you could find some emigres from the former USSR around you - many of them are quite cultured, though of course skewed towards certain things.
I generally share your sense of loneliness - I think with age I started to care about too many things in the world around me, and it’s hard to find people who not only know what I am talking about, but also don’t have extreme opinions or are at least capable of accepting the fact that someone has a different one.
With books and movies and shows it’s mostly that people don’t watch or read much, but with current events it’s mostly opinions.
-OP

OP, are you from the former USSR? If yes, I'll offer some cultural observations.

Yes I am, but I’ve lived in the US for a while now. I’ve met quite a few culture snobs from the old country, but I think their culture knowledge base is a bit outdated and will be perceived as obscure by many US intellectuals. Or maybe they simply lack American cultural knowledge?

If you were a teen in USSR in 1970-80s, we grew up in a very peculiar time - the things we enjoyed in terms of "culture" were pretty much the same things our parents (and often grandparents) enjoyed. In all other times what the youth watched, read and listened to was at least annoying and usually quite scandalous to their elders, but at that time in USSR the period of stagnation (эпоха застоя) reached everywhere. Add to it the overall limitations on what was accessible due to the iron curtain and state sanctioned art, and many of us ended up (maybe subconsciously) with the idea that there is some canon, some body of culture that is universal across time and space. I see lots of people of my background looking for that stability and continuity, culturally speaking, that they had with their parents, and they want to replicate it with their children. I was wondering if part of you is searching for that too.

Thank you to whoever posted this! This is thought-provoking. I’m the PP who posted about New Yorker arts reviews and I am definitely subconsciously searching for a thread that ties everything together after not being able to make sense of the fragmented nature of modern culture and the feeling that the rules of my childhood no longer apply. I definitely force my personal literary canon on my child- it’s what were deemed classics by my 50s and 60s-educated teachers who taught in the 70s and 80s. I married into a family from a former British colony and discovered a totally different canon of “acceptable” culture, which means my DD and I are happily drowning in books and will never catch up on music or film.

I cannot wait to research more about the period of stagnation in USSR. I grew up in a college town and there were always a few Soviet refugee families at my school. The kids would arrive mid year wearing the kind of outfits that don’t exist with globalization and then they would smoke us all in orchestra and art class. They might not have had access to breadth but they had so much depth in those areas that they seemed much more sophisticated than we were!

PP. If you want to learn more about USSR at that time, take a look at this book https://www.amazon.com/Russians-Hedrick-Smith/dp/0812905210. What I find especially fascinating - it was written at that time, so you'll see the 1970s USSR through the eyes of an American who had no idea that he is documenting what's about to disappear in 10-15 years.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:This is interesting but I keep thinking it only talks about Western world art and music. Can art and music from Asia or South America be part of this discussion?

I love classical music and art and I try to expose my son between soccer practices and all the sports/ school/ play dates but it’s hard.

It’s hard enough to make sure my son and I are well versed in the Western arts world, so I am not looking as broadly just yet
-OP

OP, everything you post suggests that you’re looking for a social and leg up for your kid. That’s fine. There’s no need to say claim interested in “culture” for its own sake.

It’s not true. Where we live culture per se isn’t highly valued. You can be a software engineer or work in finance and know nothing about culture and you will be respected more than a teacher who knows art and literature
-OP

That’s an odd red herring. You’ve asked whether a software engineer can be cultured. So it seems you want both professional and social success for your DC. In any case, your kid may live elsewhere as an adult.

It’s unclear why you’re disguising your motives.

It’s unclear why you don’t trust me when I tell you my motives. I want my son to be a better person. Someone said you had to have a low paying job to be cultured, so I said I had no idea and thought it could be a side dish so to speak.
But it’s ok, you are free to think what you want about me or my motives

Lesson 1 of American Culture: if you have to ask how to be cool, you'll never know.

This is only true wrt all the cringy stuff like HS popularity and coolness.
This is the opposite of culture and intellectualism

Nope. The cool people are the ones creating culture and doing interesting things, not the people trying to figure out what's popular so they can look "cultured".

Meh. The cool people largely comment on existing art—podcasts etc.

Artists learn from other artists. Writers tell writing students to read, read, read. Scholars, researchers and writers review other people's work, whether in peer-reviewed journals or the NY Times. They consume culture too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Read the New York Times every day, The Atlantic, and the New Yorker. You can add to that list but that would get you a long way.

This is good advice. I grew up middle class and pretty broke in the Midwest. My parents longed for a different life and we got the Sunday NYT, the Atlantic and the New Yorker at home. This was back in the heyday of magazines so we also had stacks of fashion magazines and Vanity Fair. We also watched CBS Sunday Morning before church. That all gave me a glimpse into a different world and the ability to slip into college and my first job in NYC with a little bit of camouflage.

Nowadays culture is so driven by money that I would only bother because you want your kids to know and learn, not because you want to equip them to be part of certain worlds. Those worlds are mostly gone.

I don’t think being cultured will give my kid any tangible advantage, that’s for sure.
I value being a cultured person (in a broad sense, from music to current events) in and of itself and I just hope my son will also take pride in being well-read and all around knowledgeable one day.
-OP

OP, I’m legitimately inspired that you care.

I take a lot of pride in being well-read and all-around knowledgeable, but I’ll be the first to say that it’s an increasingly lonely or even scoffed-at effort. My child’s fancy private school is overrun by real estate investors and developers, tech execs, and other new millennium white collar jobs. I go to book clubs in the neighborhood and only 2-3 of us ever read the books. The parent pushback about teaching the basics of literature, arts and even history is constant. I grew up in an era and place when white collar=doctor and lawyer, and parents read books and multiple newspapers daily, and could help us with history and English homework. Now anyone who even has time to read a book is seen as antisocial or an underemployed slacker.

It makes me sad for where we’re at now.

Thank you so much for your kind words, PP!
How is it possible to be in a book club and not read the books? I mean, isn’t the whole point to discuss them?
Also, why do parents push back on literature and arts? I thought the whole point of being at a private school was to get some tried and true basics of humanities (since in public many things are too “progressive”, at least in the blue states).
I don’t know if you are open to it, but if you could find some emigres from the former USSR around you - many of them are quite cultured, though of course skewed towards certain things.
I generally share your sense of loneliness - I think with age I started to care about too many things in the world around me, and it’s hard to find people who not only know what I am talking about, but also don’t have extreme opinions or are at least capable of accepting the fact that someone has a different one.
With books and movies and shows it’s mostly that people don’t watch or read much, but with current events it’s mostly opinions.
-OP

OP, are you from the former USSR? If yes, I'll offer some cultural observations.

Yes I am, but I’ve lived in the US for a while now. I’ve met quite a few culture snobs from the old country, but I think their culture knowledge base is a bit outdated and will be perceived as obscure by many US intellectuals. Or maybe they simply lack American cultural knowledge?

If you were a teen in USSR in 1970-80s, we grew up in a very peculiar time - the things we enjoyed in terms of "culture" were pretty much the same things our parents (and often grandparents) enjoyed. In all other times what the youth watched, read and listened to was at least annoying and usually quite scandalous to their elders, but at that time in USSR the period of stagnation (эпоха застоя) reached everywhere. Add to it the overall limitations on what was accessible due to the iron curtain and state sanctioned art, and many of us ended up (maybe subconsciously) with the idea that there is some canon, some body of culture that is universal across time and space. I see lots of people of my background looking for that stability and continuity, culturally speaking, that they had with their parents, and they want to replicate it with their children. I was wondering if part of you is searching for that too.

Yes, a lot of it hits close to home.
I’ve accepted that my son will never watch/read (let alone like) most of the stuff I enjoyed as a child or teen. He will also read and watch some things that are new to me and not all of them are low brow or mass culture or whatever.
However I still think there is a canon. Even in the Soviet days it was much broader than just the Soviet art, of course. I doubt young people of today will cover all of it, or even most of it, but it would be good if they at least dipped into it a little. And then they have all the contemporary art and literature and cinema and wine and culinary arts to explore so it’s a lot.
If I could have my son learn one thing in the realm of culture - it would be good taste, the ability to detect high quality art in whichever form. I know it’s not possible without seeing a bunch of good art, the trained eye. So that’s what I hope to accomplish.

Re: the canon. Yes, it was much broader than the Soviet art, e.g. we were super well versed in the Latin American literature because those writers were welcomed by the people who decided what gets translated and published. But if you look at the US writers that were offered to us, other than Hemingway, you would find some interesting 20th century choices there - Theodore Dreiser was THE thing, remember that?

OP, I have a feeling that you and I exchanged emails once when you created a throwaway email after posting here. If that's you, let's keep talking.