A review by violetpretty5
Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class by Scott Timberg
3.0
The idea that the polarity in haves/have nots is stretching the middle class thin is not especially unique -- it sounds like the alarmist rhetoric I hear when I skim presidential debates. Author Scott Timberg's slant is that this disparity deeply affects an arts community that primarily consists of middle class people making an average living -- artists in all types of mediums as well as the "support staffs" that do not necessarily create content, like book store clerks or copyeditors. A big piece of this crisis is that the record industry, news media, and others failed to adjust their business models to remain relevant in the digital age, resulting in lots of layoffs and job changes away from the arts in the last couple decades, and lots of shuttered businesses and opportunities. In short, support for the arts is eroding, and without decisive action the arts will either entirely implode into nothingness or become a stilted rich person's game -- Timberg seems to support both theories simultaneously.
While I can get behind the general gist, I had some issues with the execution of the book. Excessive quotations and references are not always fully explained or relevant (they just sound like a name dropper doing his thing). I was not clear as to Timberg's definitions of fundamental concepts, like "middle class" -- all I can recall that vaguely anchors the terminology is a reference to $26-34K per year being lower middle class (p. 91). Likewise, his conflagration of creators and support staff bewilders me because it's not clear where he draws the line. Is the "evil" accountant at a record label part of this support designation? A temp who is making art supplies at a factory? An ambiguous boundary between creators and assistants seems to actually invalidate his argument that the arts infrastructure is imploding, because with enough bs-ing almost any job can be tied to a creative impetus, and there are still lots of jobs in the world.
In the end, I found the tone of the book somewhere between liberal whiner and chicken-little syndrome. This delivery alienated me from the common ground I felt with the book, such as being a liberal whiner myself, or the uneasiness I've felt watching almost every record store I've cared about close down and almost every free press weekly become an eviscerated shell of its former self. I felt like the important points of the message were lost in a jumble of intellectualism and scope, and I have a harder time believing analyses that are histrionic instead of well-rounded. But I guess the upside is that, by not scribing the definitive analysis of this crisis, Timberg has inadvertently made room for those writerly jobs he mourns the loss of.
While I can get behind the general gist, I had some issues with the execution of the book. Excessive quotations and references are not always fully explained or relevant (they just sound like a name dropper doing his thing). I was not clear as to Timberg's definitions of fundamental concepts, like "middle class" -- all I can recall that vaguely anchors the terminology is a reference to $26-34K per year being lower middle class (p. 91). Likewise, his conflagration of creators and support staff bewilders me because it's not clear where he draws the line. Is the "evil" accountant at a record label part of this support designation? A temp who is making art supplies at a factory? An ambiguous boundary between creators and assistants seems to actually invalidate his argument that the arts infrastructure is imploding, because with enough bs-ing almost any job can be tied to a creative impetus, and there are still lots of jobs in the world.
In the end, I found the tone of the book somewhere between liberal whiner and chicken-little syndrome. This delivery alienated me from the common ground I felt with the book, such as being a liberal whiner myself, or the uneasiness I've felt watching almost every record store I've cared about close down and almost every free press weekly become an eviscerated shell of its former self. I felt like the important points of the message were lost in a jumble of intellectualism and scope, and I have a harder time believing analyses that are histrionic instead of well-rounded. But I guess the upside is that, by not scribing the definitive analysis of this crisis, Timberg has inadvertently made room for those writerly jobs he mourns the loss of.