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A review by lattelibrarian
Notes on the Death of Culture: Essays on Spectacle and Society by Mario Vargas Llosa
4.0
“Light literature, along with light cinema and light art, give the reader and the viewer the comfortable impression that they are cultured, revolutionary, modern and in the vanguard without having to make the slightest intellectual effort. Culture that purports to be avant-garde and iconoclastic instead offers conformity in its worst forms: smugness and self-satisfaction.”
Through this damning and indicting piece of literature, Llosa argues for the necessity of culture. Discussing topics such as culture, class, news reporting, eroticism, and religion, he takes no prisoners in using other literary figures, historical events, and more to convince you why it is so necessary to maintain culture for both aesthetic, beauty, and educational purposes.
These essays are so well-crafted and argued in such a way that only illuminate his arguments--and his arguments are totally compelling. I think many of my generation would want to do away with culture, in a sense, in that culture becomes synonymous with class and hierarchy. But culture is also to do with the home, the country, and the beauty that goes along with it. With the huge influx of technology and access to everything all the time, there is more of a precedent than ever to produce content and mere entertainment, rather than something that requires thought, precision, and focus.
Llosa wants to bring culture back--even if it means estranging others. He does not mean to place one country's culture over another in a hierarchical sense, but it is necessary to view them all as different and beautiful in their own way, though there is a type of hierarchy depending on whose point of view you require.
Overall, this is a well-thought out compilation of essays, one that requires intensity and a dictionary.
Through this damning and indicting piece of literature, Llosa argues for the necessity of culture. Discussing topics such as culture, class, news reporting, eroticism, and religion, he takes no prisoners in using other literary figures, historical events, and more to convince you why it is so necessary to maintain culture for both aesthetic, beauty, and educational purposes.
These essays are so well-crafted and argued in such a way that only illuminate his arguments--and his arguments are totally compelling. I think many of my generation would want to do away with culture, in a sense, in that culture becomes synonymous with class and hierarchy. But culture is also to do with the home, the country, and the beauty that goes along with it. With the huge influx of technology and access to everything all the time, there is more of a precedent than ever to produce content and mere entertainment, rather than something that requires thought, precision, and focus.
Llosa wants to bring culture back--even if it means estranging others. He does not mean to place one country's culture over another in a hierarchical sense, but it is necessary to view them all as different and beautiful in their own way, though there is a type of hierarchy depending on whose point of view you require.
Overall, this is a well-thought out compilation of essays, one that requires intensity and a dictionary.