No one is dying of not reading Proust, but many people are leading hollower and shallower lives because the arts are so inaccessible.
Tangential to your main point, and preaching to the choir, butā¦ why are āthe artsā āinaccessible?ā The Internet is a huge revolution in the democratization of art relative to most of human history, TV dramas are now much more complex and interesting than they have been in the past, A24 is pumping out tons of weird/āinteresting movies, way more people are making interesting music and distributing it than before.
I think (and this is a drive-by comment, I havenāt read the article), the author is conflating āserious literatureā ā often an acquired taste that people need to get from a class or similar ā with all of āthe arts.ā I studied literature in college, read poetry and e.g. Tolstoy in my free time now, yada yada ā and I think this is extremely paternalistic.
I think thereās value in someone teaching you to enjoy Proust, and indeed wish more people had access to that sort of thing. But I donāt think it comes anywhere close to deserving the kind of uniquely elevated position over other forms of artistic production that literature professors etc sometimes (not always) want to give it, and which I feel is on display in this quote.
In any case, the obvious thing to do is ask whether the beneficiaries would prefer more soup or more Proust.
Tangential to your main point, and preaching to the choir, butā¦ why are āthe artsā āinaccessible?ā The Internet is a huge revolution in the democratization of art relative to most of human history, TV dramas are now much more complex and interesting than they have been in the past, A24 is pumping out tons of weird/āinteresting movies, way more people are making interesting music and distributing it than before.
I think (and this is a drive-by comment, I havenāt read the article), the author is conflating āserious literatureā ā often an acquired taste that people need to get from a class or similar ā with all of āthe arts.ā I studied literature in college, read poetry and e.g. Tolstoy in my free time now, yada yada ā and I think this is extremely paternalistic.
I think thereās value in someone teaching you to enjoy Proust, and indeed wish more people had access to that sort of thing. But I donāt think it comes anywhere close to deserving the kind of uniquely elevated position over other forms of artistic production that literature professors etc sometimes (not always) want to give it, and which I feel is on display in this quote.
In any case, the obvious thing to do is ask whether the beneficiaries would prefer more soup or more Proust.