High, Middle and Low Brow [Article]

I think middlebrow is a term that the Daily Mail have just made up. And I would absolutely categorise Dan Brown as low brow.

For what it's worth, I have been massively happier in the last few years since I embraced my inner low brow. I watch BBC3 and I read category romances. It helps, while I'm finishing my PhD.

I have Star Trek novels on my shelf beside all my Thomas Hardy. I loved Brave New World just as much as I loved Jurassic Park. My favourite book is Watership Down, but I still laugh at fart jokes. My copy of Jilly Coopers 'Riders' has been read so many times it's held togther with sticky tape. I have a whole shelf of m/m romances - right above all my Lousia May Alcott and Susan Coolidge.

I love McD's and would live on Big Macs, but I also adore champagne and I import all my coffee. I have shoes from Prada, but I still buy my knickers in Primark. I am a shamelss Savage Garden fan but I like to listen to Leonard Cohen in the car.

And I think, that, in all honesty, I'm just like everyone else. I don't think anyone can be completely put into one of those boxes that the article seems to think they can.

Most of us will have aspects of each of those categories, that's what makes us unique people and not carboard Daily Mail coutouts - we would actually tear apart a character if they were neatly boxed like that.

Sounds like just another bullshit class issue article pretending to be news from the Mail.

I'm amazed the s-word remained unused in the Mail's article until paragraph five. Standards at that newspaper may be slipping again. If that's possible.

What shaldna said. I have category romances, women's fic, business books, classics, YA, sci-fi, and Pulitzer winners on my nightstand. Right now I'm reading American Salvage (a National Book Award finalist) and a Danielle Steel novel. Maybe I have unibrow tastes?

I thought Dan Brown was unibrow...

Bubastes said:

Maybe I have unibrow?

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You can get a wax for that.

Long live the unibrow!

Bill Bailey is a highbrow comedian? Well okay, I'll take it. He makes me laugh like a drain and I don't apologise for that.

As for Dan Brown and Maeve Binchy being middlebrow? My arse they are. Sophie Kinsella? Jesus Christ; what are these people on? I lost a few IQ points the last time I read a Shopaholic novel.

I'd better not tell anyone I'm in the middle of reading Ulysses and Candide. God forbid anyone think I was a snob. Or had, you know, standards.

I think everybody's tastes are actually a blend of high and low brow. Some have a greater percentage of one or the other, but all people, I think, are capable of enjoying some from column A and some from column B.

Libbie said:

I think everybody's tastes are actually a blend of high and low brow. Some have a greater percentage of one or the other, but all people, I think, are capable of enjoying some from column A and some from column B.

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Yep, that's me. Swinging wildly between fine art and rollicking pulp and enjoying myself tremendously.

gothicangel said:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/a...e-road-tastes-stop-pretending-love-opera.html

On my bookshelf I have an eclectic mix. James Robertson, Sarah Waters, Ken Follet, Rosemary Sutcliff. Which probably means I flit between high and middle brow.

But Dan Brown is middle brow? There's nothing wrong with reading and enjoying Dan Brown, but I always thought mid-brow was 'mainstream.' Somewhere between a beach-read and a potential Booker nominee.

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Am I reading this right? An article that says it's okay to like what you like?

People have to be told this?

Really?

Maybe my reading comprehension is broken.

bearilou said:

Am I reading this right? An article that says it's okay to like what you like?

People have to be told this?

Really?

Maybe my reading comprehension is broken.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't worry about it. The Mail has to occasionally come up with some bollocks that isn't about asylum seekers causing cancer or Muslims lowering house prices while on Facebook.

I read everything from Angela Carter to Preacher - and I'm too old and too bolshie to give a toss what other people think of my tastes. Although I might feel the need to apologise for what I read if it was the Daily Mail.

I read whatever passes my first-few-pages test. Right now I'm reading The Fall (solidly middlebrow vampire fic), Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen hasn't gotten so popular she's no longer high-brow, has she?), and The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards (seriously foot-noted history, so gotta be high-brow, huh?) I like opera, and Glee. I love food and house porn (Food Network and HGTV.)

As for pizza, I make my own. Does that make me a snob or just frugal?

I guess I don't go to enough fancy parties to worry about measuring brows, including my own.

Wow. I think, according to their little quiz, I'm somewhere beneath lowbrow.

Like maybe Primordial Oozebrow.

I have never heard of any of that "music" and would never wear any of the "clothing" choices -- I shop at the thrift store, thankewverymuch. Not cuz I'm retro or hipster, but cuz I'm cheap and don't give a rat's ass if anyone likes my clothes...

Gonna go roll around in my mudpit now.

Primordial Oozebrow is my favourite kind of author!

(Well it is now.)

It's a good term. We can share it!

Here's hoping no-one ever plucks us.

What?

I don't believe in high or low brow. I believe in good books I enjoy reading.

Please list some primordial ooze brow titles. Me wants!

I don't drink coffee at all. Am I no-brow?

No,you don't know what you are missing. Coffee is the nectar of the gods!

I read James Baldwin and Donald Goines. I love old school gangster rap and Mozart. Tupac and Gil Scott-Heron are both poets to me. I wouldn't be caught dead in ugly clothes but I will rock socks and house shoes(Not in front of my mother. She considers such an ensemble to be the ways of heathens). I'm a Goth but still hood.

I'm hood-bougie in my tastes. I think people like a little bit of everything.