The first belief is that reading “seriously” matters , especially if you take your taste/intellect/capacity to create seriously. The definition of “serious” is highly personal, of course, but all of us have an instinctive sense of what it means and when we aren’t doing it. We usually know when we’re reading something that’s good for us—and we know,... See more

To thrive in the new world with all its accelerating complexity and overproduction, it suggests, one must either be a genius or a braindead, unthinking moron – and, by the same token, to make the most brilliant and sophisticated artworks, or the dumbest, most off-putting content possible. Bad taste is a way of standing out when there are too many... See more