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“I am the sum of my small steps,” announce the handwritten-style notes in an advertisement torn from a recent issue of Oprah Magazine. Ecce Middlebrow’s ideal American woman, forever in pursuit of a clear (un-anxious, […]
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In a recent HiLobrow.com post, I casually asserted that the so-called Baby Boomers [I call them the Blank Generation] were born from 1944-53. I’m aware, of course, that America’s postwar “baby boom” began in 1946 […]
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Looking back on it all, from the vantage point of a couple months, it’s apparent that the Susan Boyle Phenomenon (SBP) had very little to do with poor Susan Boyle (SB) herself. Susan Boyle’s judges […]
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The oldest Boomers turn 65 this year, and the youngest turn 56. By now, they’ve partially relinquished their collective death grip on the best jobs — though not the best lifestyles, which they’ll always enjoy. […]
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An abridged version of this essay appeared in the journal n+1 (Winter 2007). PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE I set out to commemorate the heroes of old who sailed the good ship […]
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Is it so small a thing To have enjoy’d the sun, To have lived light in the spring, To have loved, to have thought, to have done… SO DEMANDS THE protagonist of Matthew Arnold’s 1852 […]
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Psychedelic revelations about the artificial nature of reality
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OUR READERS already know that HILOBROW has a problem with — in fact, an animus against — quatsch. As of today, we’re going to start fighting back against its reign of terror. Building on my […]
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An intellectual historian and historian of intellectuals, CHRISTOPHER LASCH (1932-94) picked up the torch offered by negative-dialectical curmudgeons (T.W. Adorno, Dwight Macdonald) who’d rejected the shibboleths of liberals and conservatives alike. Pinpointing the social, political, […]
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“To and fro/Stop and go/That’s what makes the world go round…” Ugh. I pity the fool who sees Disney’s 1963 adaptation of The Sword in the Stone (from which these insipid lyrics are quoted) before […]
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WES ANDERSON’S Bottle Rocket (1996) raised the hopes of hilobrows everywhere, and his Rushmore (1998) fulfilled those hopes in spades. So what happened? Anderson once knew how to get a great performance out of his […]
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A year ago this month, I identified a generational cohort of Americans and Western Europeans: the New Gods. Born between 1914 and 1923, the New Gods are — to translate my periodization into the middlebrow-speak […]
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This is the final installment in our HiLobrow Cover Art series. Thanks to Luc Sante, Jonathan Lethem, and everyone else who sent in examples. It’s been fun! Check out the entire series. *** *** *** […]
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