Nobrow : The Culture of Marketing, the Marketing of Culture (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

John Seabrook, The New Yorker's "Buzz Studies" writer, deftly conveys the hubbub of modern pop culture, the blending of highbrow and lowbrow tastes, into a new sensibility he dubs "Nobrow." In Nobrowland, nobody can sell out, because art and commerce have fused like colliding electrons. America used to be split between "stark intellectuality and the plane of stark business," but now, as Puff Daddy observes, "It's all about the Benjamins [$100 bills]." It's not just that an Oxford-bred guy like Seabrook is a connoisseur of Biggie Smalls, it's that everyone, high and low, wants to feel part of the Buzz, to soak up the power of celebrity success. Puffy's rap hit constitutes "merchandising, advertising, salary-boasting, and art all at once," says Seabrook. Nowadays, "commercial culture has to do the work that both high and folk culture used to do--not only enlighten and teach but bond families and communities."

Nobrow is itself a work of Nobrow art, shape-shifting like a Beck tune: it's art appreciation, memoir, social history, high-altitude academic theory, and shoe-leather reporting all at once. Seabrook captures world-historical figures in action: George Lucas, MTV's Judy McGrath, music exec Danny "Nirvana" Goldberg, and kabillionaire David Geffen, who helped bring you Tom Cruise and DreamWorks. The big book on Geffen may be The Operator, but Seabrook can nail him in a phrase: "The boredom in his eyes, which seemed on the verge of spilling over into other parts of his face, was held in check by his lively eyebrows." And no one has outdone Seabrook's jaunty account of his elite magazine's Nobrowification by Tina Brown, who established "a hierarchy of hotness."

Seabrook doesn't score on every shot, but it's fun to watch him play. He's like a kid brother to his cult idol, George W.S. Trow, author of the prescient 1978 classic Within the Context of No Context. If Eustace Tilley, The New Yorker's famous monocled snob icon, got zonked on "chronic bubonic" pot and gangsta rap, he might have written this dizzy yet erudite book. Indeed, one might not be altogether amiss in calling it "da bomb." --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Culture in America is a lot more complicated than it used to be. Aimed at reinforcing class distinctions, the terms "highbrow" (signifying traditionally elite European culture) and "lowbrow" (meaning commercial culture aimed at the masses) were popularized by H.L. Mencken and Van Wyck Brooks in the century's first decade. In this breezy cultural analysis and memoir, Seabrook (Deeper: My Two-Year Odyssey in Cyberspace) delineates the subsequent blurring of the genres in U.S. culture. Drawing upon his experiences of writing for Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, Seabrook traces how "nobrow"--in which "commercial culture is a source of status, rather then the thing the elite defines itself against"--has radically changed how we view both high and low art. Setting his arguments against a tableau of rich and famous buzz-brokers--Talk magazine editor Tina Brown, studio head David Geffen, producer George Lucas--Seabrook manages to be simultaneously gossipy and insightful. Along the way he makes smart points about the role that social privilege plays in establishing taste, how advertising functions by validating social identity and how cultural hierarchies hinge more on power than on taste. Seabrook's mixture of the personal and the analytical is always animated and intriguing, but his analysis is so strong that, by the end, readers may wish for more meat and less memoir. Agent, Joy Harris. (Feb.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (February 6, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375704515
• ISBN-13: 978-0375704512
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #177,070 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars More on nobrow, May 28, 2006

By	Jack Rocher "Jack Rocher" (pennington) - See all my reviews

I searched amazon under "nobrow" and discovered another book on the same sumject, though infinitely better than Seabrook's self-indulgent musings (see the first 3-4 reviews below, they tell the whole story). From Lowbrow to Nobrow by Peter Swirski is lucid, engaging, intellectually stimulating and funny, on top of leaving Seabrook's superficial analysis in the dust (nobrow literary culture, it appears has been around for a century at least).
In fact I'd go so far as to say Swirski's book (released very recent too) is the ultimate study of the subject, at least according to the dean of popular culture studies, Ray Browne, who praises it in the editorial. Check it out for yourself, you're in for hours of happy reading.

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointingly self-indulgent, July 9, 2000

By	Marcy L. Thompson (Sammamish, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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This review is from: NoBrow: The Culture of Marketing - the Marketing of Culture (Hardcover)

This book is not as interesting as it sounds. The author has a single insight which he strings out over several hundred pages of gloriously self-indulgent prose.

The book sounded intriguing, so I bought it. The basic idea was interesting so I started to read it. The writing was facile and fluent, so I kept on reading, hoping to find something in it besides self-indulgent reflections on popular culture and how cool the author is to be on the "inside".

I believe that MTV has some kind of deep meaning, but this book's discussion of it fails to uncover that meaning. I suppose there is something new to say about Tina Brown and the New Yorker -- this book fails to say it.

This book holds the promise of explaining what the convolutions of the New yorker in recent years mean as a parable of the changing cultural mores. However, and sadly, it fails to deliver on its promise, and in the end is a self-indulgent memoir of one man's odessey through popular culture.

Not really bad, this book is primarily a disappointment.

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars An Overblown New Yorker Article, November 13, 2000

By	Edward Garea "Edward Garea" (Branchville, New Jersey United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: NoBrow: The Culture of Marketing - the Marketing of Culture (Hardcover)

Although the title looked enticing, I was greatly disappointed as I read this slim volume. I was vaguely told what "Nobrow" was, but no whys, no wherefores. Was it a celebration of Nobrow or a critique? The book contains profiles of what the author sees as noted Nobrow figures, like David Geffen and George Lucas. They seemed to be re-edited New Yorker articles, and are nice as they go, but after 200 or so pages, I still don't have much of a clue as to what Nobrow really is. I did, however, learn who the author was. He seems to be the sub-text of this book. We know he is a feature writer at the New Yorker, a Princeton grad, and lives somewhere in Tribeca. If you want to read a book about today's culture and its roots, read Thomas Franks' The Conquest of Cool. If you want to read a book about the New Yorker, try Bright Lights, Big City. At least it's more honest.