Cultural Criticism

Cultural criticism is what is practiced by cultural critics, the intellectuals formerly known as moralists and publicists, before those became dirty words. That is to say, they are those who have taken it upon themselves to describe the conduct of their fellow citizens to their fellow citizens, taking conduct in a very broad sense, including prominently that part of it which concerns moving ideas from one mind to another; to judge whether and how that conduct is wanting; and to suggest more desirable states of affairs. No principled distinction can be drawn between cultural criticism and the writing of newspaper editorials, just as there is none between book reviewing and literary criticism; the main social difference is that people who say they engage in "foo criticism" are now more likely to be university professors than the op-ed writers and reviewers.

There are differences between cultural criticism and sociology, apart from the merely conventional ones made by publishers, tenure committees, etc. Sociology is not (overtly) normative, and at least claims to prefer statistics and data, and logical and methodological rigor, to personal impressions and arbitrary or conventional generalizations, and rhetoric and emotional appeals. In reality, of course, much sociology is just disguised cultural criticism, and much cultural criticism is just conventional wisdom --- that is to say, prejudice --- in distilled form.

To say all this is not to dismiss cultural criticism as unworthy of notice; we do need to decide what is to be done about various aspects of our life in common (and even our several lives in private, which are inevitably tied to the common life); and many aspects of society are simply beyond the reach of (good) sociology, at least for now. There is a genuine need for good cultural criticism, and it goes beyond demonstrating the writer's cleverness, and the writer's and reader's righteousness. (One of the most prominent sorts of leftist cultural criticism, the Frankfurt School of "critical theory," seems to meet only one need in addition to those two, namely paranoia; but that can be satisfied by reading Stephen King or watching the X-Files.)

The Baffler [Review: The Birth and (Hoped-For) Death of the Rebel Consumer Hero, or, Between Mencken and the Cultural Front]
Jacques Barzun
Paul Berman, A Tale of Two Utopias: The Political Journey of the Generation of 1968
Stanley Crouch
- Notes of a Hanging Judge
- Always in Pursuit
Joan Didion
Barbara Ehrenreich
- The Worst Years of Our Lives
- Snarling Citizens
Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Russell Jacoby
Wendy Kaminer
- I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional
- It's All the Rage
- True Love Waits
- Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials [Review: Another Book for the Bonfire]
John Leonard [Most of his output is ostensibly book reviews; don't be fooled]
- The Last Innocent White Man in America
- When the Kissing Had to Stop
John McGowan, Democracy's Children: Intellectuals and the Rise of Cultural Politics
Katha Pollitt, Reasonable Creatures and the "Subject to Debate" column in The Nation.
Neil Postman, Conscientious Objections
George Steiner, In Bluebeard's Castle [Review]

Vassily Aksyonov, In Search of Melancholy Baby
Ward Cannel and June Macklin, The Human Nature Industry: How Human Nature Is Manufactured, Distributed, Advertised and Consumed in the United States and Parts of Canada
Michel Crozier, Trouble With America
Sebastian de Grazia, Girls Lean Back Everywhere
Andrew Delbanco, The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil
Mark Dery, The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink
Hans Magnus Enzensberger
- Critical Essays
- Europe, Europe ["Translation of Ach Europa!"]
- Mediocrity and Delusion: Collected Diversions
- Zig-Zag: The Politics of Culture and Vice Vers
Marilyn Hacker
F. Allan Hanson, Testing Testing: Social Consequences of the Examined Life [online]
John Lukacs, Historical Consciousness
Thomas Mallon, Rockets and Rodeos
Lewis Mumford
- Technics and Civilization
- The Pentagon of Power
John Cowper Powys, The Meaning of Culture
Adolph Reed
Tom Shachtman, The Inarticulate Society: Eloquence and Culture in America
Slater, The Pursuit of Loneliness
Marianna Torgovnick, Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives

Notebooks

Cultural Criticism