Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America [Paperback]

Robert Hughes (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0446670340 | ISBN-13: 978-0446670340 | Publication Date: September 1, 1994

This New York Times bestseller ignited national debate when it was released in hardcover. Now in paperback, Culture of Complaint is a brilliant, passionate examination of multiculturalism in America today, and what Robert Hughes sees as its devastating effects on the nation. "Exhilarating".-- Newsweek

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The art critic offers a withering jeremiad for an American culture plagued by political correctness in this PW bestseller.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Hughes, Time magazine's art critic and author of The Fatal Shore ( LJ 11/1/86) and Barcelona ( LJ 1/92), here takes on three subjects: the current state of American culture and politics; the arguments for and against multiculturalism in schools and colleges; and what he regards as the declining standards of American art and museums. On the first topic, he attacks Americans for having become a culture of complainers, symbolized by their growing claims to be victims of this or that injustice and their demands for the expansion of rights without concern for duties and obligations. On the second issue, he argues for a sound multiculturalism but rejects Afrocentrism and political correctness that rules out dead, white European males such as Plato and Dante. On the third subject, he sees the decline of American art symbolized by the Mapplethorpe controversy, which elevated a minor photographer into the limelight, and politicaly correct art that believes expressiveness, not quality, is enough. Of primary interest to academic and larger public libraries.
- Jeffrey R. Herold, Bucyrus P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (September 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446670340
• ISBN-13: 978-0446670340
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #897,603 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert Hughes was born in Australia in 1938 and has lived in Europe and the United States since 1964. Since 1970 he has worked in New York as an art critic for Time Magazine. He has twice received the Franklin Jeweer Mather Award for Distinguished Criticism from the College Art Association of America.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good cultural critique from a smart outsider, June 14, 1999

By 

Robert Lawrence (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America (Paperback)

It's strange that, during the 1990s, the two people who have thought most clearly about American culture and politics aren't American. One is the British journalist Christopher Hitchens; the other is the Australian art critic Robert Hughes.

Why should a Hughes have such an advantage over the native literati? In a sentence, he comes from a culture that is brutally direct. Australians, in print and otherwise, don't care much for euphemism. Hughes writes without the stream of caveats, pre-emptive apologies, and other bad-faith gestures that fill most books on the "culture wars." This most un-American way of writing sheds considerable light on this overdone subject, and at his best Hughes verges on Tocquevillean.

It's a shame that some clown at a publishing house rewrote the subtitle as "A Passionate Look into the Ailing Heart of America." The new subtitle represents just the type of therapeutic pap Hughes is out to squash. The original ("The Fraying of America") said it much better, and with fewer words.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A call for skilled, complex, and eclectic thought, January 18, 2004

By 

J. Remington "John Remington" (Adams, Oregon USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America (Paperback)

Granted, attacking contemporary America's cultural love for the debased, the self-indulgent extreme, the hapless and unskilled mediocrity as well as the insipid cults that have risen around exhalting the helpless victim, nurturing the stunted "inner child" and bandaging the wounded self-esteem seems too obvious.

Fortunately TIME Magazine Art Critic and writer extraordinaire Robert Hughes laces his acid-dripping pen with adroit observations and incredible verbal acrobatics in an all-out attack that provides hints of solutions and actual celebrations of all that is good in America.

Hughes pulls no punches and spares no prisoners as he lambasts (always with great aplomb and wit) extremism from both sides. Liberals and Conservatives receive broadsword swashes and pin-point snipes in equal measures. Hughes calls ultimately calls for true eclectism as opposed to multi-culturalism- a movement in his mind that wrongly excludes other cultures in favor of often fictious historical revisionism.

The rich bounty of American Culture, Hughes claims-the very culture that inspired him to leave Australia and settle in New York- lies in her melting pot of culture. America, in Hughes' expert eye, is a beautiful amalgamation of many cultures: European, Native, African, Spanish, Asian and so forth. He sees history as a complex organism made up of many diverse parts. Effective scholarship, debate and production must incorperate all while eschewing the demagoguery and finger pointing that tragically seems to prevail in so much public discourse.

Make no mistake,like any good critic or thinker, Hughes is out to pick a fight and he certainly challenges all comers. One may not agree with all of his points or supports, but that isn't the point. Hughes' number one objective is to confront American apathy with an electo-shock to the system.

In short, Hughes does indeed call for a certain brand of elitism in both art and public life. An elitism bred not of social class, race or economics but rather an hierarchy based upon skill, intelligence and vision.

THE CULTURE OF COMPLAINT will challenge the reader as well as entertain. A magnificent read.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Finely-Tuned Blast At PC, May 31, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America (Oxford American Lectures) (Hardcover)

I thoroughly enjoyed Hughes' lively and pointed skewering of the apostles of PC and their tiresome love of victimhood. I must question how closely the Kirkus Reviews writer (cited above) read "Culture of Complaint" because the reviewer takes Hughes to task for not addressing some issues in more ponderous depth. The explanation is simple and is provided in the preface: "Culture" was drawn from a series of three lectures Hughes gave at Yale University, and the lectures are presented in the book with a minimum of editing. Heavily-footnoted lectures would have been a sure path to mass narcolepsy among Hughes' original sudiences.