Quote:
Originally Posted by Eric
Jan Mbali writes:
I basically agree with that. It is the reason why most of us don't just stick to non-fiction to find out how a country or people ticks.
I've also heard that Marx quote about Balzac. We should be open-minded about the political spectrum, but also about gender, sexual preference, and so on. Imagine if only gays read novels about homosexuality, or only women read novels by women, or only Blacks novels by Blacks. The world would fragment. And we'd never learn what the other half was doing. If you only read fiction and non-fiction describing people who are like you, or with whom you agree, you will never be challenged by something new and different.
I am a dilettante, but being that teaches you things that you wouldn't learn if you stuck to one sort of book or film. As for being middle-class, yes, I am. What is the difference between being middle-class and being bourgeois? And what is the difference between petit bourgeois and haute bourgeois?
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An excellent outlook. Viva richness in diversity and messy culures. Culrural purity is closely related in my mind to a lot of very nasty tendencies and decay and death. The dilettante tag was ironic - it was an insult by lefties of 100 - 150 years ago, like "petite bourgeois philistine", but underlying the irony is a real fear of being superficial (cf. the dictionary quote by another reader). A fear you and most others on this site do not have to share - you (plural) share a lot of erudition and depth as far as I can supercfically judge.
Your question about differences is intersting. Petite bourgeois in terms of an insult is a state of mind rather than rank. Technically W. Blake was one (a petty tradesman - a printer)- but the breadth of his mind was completely at odds with traditonalal petite bourgeois meanness of spirit and narrow ambitions (which makes them prey to supporting nasty dictators who promise stuff:
"It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tent of prosperity:
Thus could I song and thus rejoice: but it is not so with me."
Just read a story by EM Forster (The eternal moment) followed by one by DH LAwrence in the same collection (The White Stocking). Amazing how Forster was obsessed with fine gradations of class and Lawrence (a cross-class son of a miner and schoolteacher) was liberated from them. And then I thought - half the great works of English literature (Pride and Prejudice!!) is driven precisely by the tension between the petite bourgeois and their rubbing up against the big bourgeois and (very different!) the nobillity.