Culture We Deserve

The Culture We Deserve by Jacques Barzun, 183 pages

This is a collection of pieces written by Barzun during the late '80s.  Collectively, they are neither a jeremiad over decline, nor do they offer much in the way of concrete recommendations for improvement.  Each is a brief discussion of some aspect of the state of art and life at the end of an age.  Barzun is thoughtful, erudite, and never conventional.  In one essay, he diagnoses a major problem with art today as not a shortage, but a glut, and suggests discouraging rather than encouraging aspiring artists.  In another he cites a profusion of reference works as an indicator of decadence.  There is little in the way of consistency - in one essay Barzun challenges moral absolutists with the strengths of an ethically diverse culture, in another he attacks the grammatical relativism of linguists.  He describes problems with the academy as the arbiter of art, but he also exalts the university as a potentially rich source of a new culture, fresh ground for human cultivation.

The essays are remarkable for their general lack of polemicism.  Throughout, Barzun seems to be proposing rather than insisting.  If it is not always easy to discern what he is about, neither should he be easily dismissed.