Further Thoughts on Brows
wild and unruly! needing a judicious trim!
Last year I wrote an essay about the concept of middlebrow for Hedgehog Review. (It’s in the book now, which you could preorder, if you feel like giving yourself a little mid-February present that will arrive out of nowhere on some slushy day.) Sadly for me, if not for her, that is the last Hedgehog essay written by me at the behest of B.D. McClay, il migglia fabbia1 and formerly my editor at that publication, though it certainly won’t be my last Hedgehog essay. I always set out to write any long essay in the hope that I can get my thoughts about a topic in order, and then move on to thinking about other things. It never works out that way. Arguments about art and status, and about our duties to it (and whether or not we have any), still proliferate, and I still find myself thinking about them, when I could be thinking about more profitable things like “What does this burning world require of me, morally?” and “How’s my deadlifting form?”
Last week I noticed that one of the classic “highbrow” defenses of art has breached its containment field.