There’s an interesting conversation afoot in two threads over on Crooked Timber about highbrow, middlebrow, and lowbrow (first post here, second here), which keeps leaping back and forth between intellectual history (the conversation begins with the 1949 Life magazine chart of highbrow, upper middlebrow, lower middlebrow, and lowbrow taste) and contemporary cultural analysis. In short, our kind of thing (or at least, my kind of thing….no need to unnecessarily implicate my fellow USIHers!). Along the way we get some Lawrence Levine, a dash of Christopher Lasch, references to a couple recent books that I didn’t know but really should have Read more