Reply to Becoming a cultured person, “just like NYC intellectuals”

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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. [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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[/quote]

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.[/quote]

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[/quote]

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

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? [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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.   [/quote]

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