Our Culture Either Has or Hasn’t Fallen Apart, Take Your Pick

Yesterday, I ran an anonymous letter from someone who claimed to be a publishing veteran and was appalled by the “half-educated” generation that had entered the business admiring “pornographic anime” and Bret Easton Ellis, and I confess I was less than sympathetic.. Another anonymous letter soon followed:

“I hate to say it but Old Fogey’s absolutely right, it’s pretty pathetic out there. I worked 4 years directly in editorial (not a publisher but with the market-research people) and I saw firsthand all the crap that agents represent. It turned me off to publishing as a modern industry. Porn (or at least raunchiness) and a comic book mentality are pretty much the standard fare now. As for how to fix this situation without some kind of radical revolution, I have no idea. It’s pretty much embedded into everything.”

Novelist Mark Haskell Smith had another take on the situation, though. “Kids don’t want to read the classics, and why should they?” he wrote. “They want to read books that are relevant to their experience. Just like they’d rather listen to Interpol than, say, Handel. It doesn’t indicate a decline in intelligence, but it might be evidence of a rejection of Old Fogeyism and snobbery.” For him, none of the elements decried anonymous are evidence that our culture is dumbed down. “Who’s to say that Bret Easton Ellis isn’t as ‘classic’ as Melville?” he asks. “I’d certainly put him in that category.”

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