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ainepalmtree's review against another edition
a great scathing review of the culture that produced english literary modernism, though carey's own political positions feels like it sits somewhere in the murky middle. his critique of the attitudes a century ago doesn't quite get him to a place to critique or think beyond continued hand wringing about overpopulation, or to even mention uneven wealth/resource distribution
mallaeuswastaken's review against another edition
3.0
The central thesis of this book — that the idea of the “idiot masses” is one born of a cultural intelligentsia which bore nothing but disdain and disgust for the “lower classes” — is pertinent, given that idea’s continued employment in our own time.
That being said, the book can get repetitious.
That being said, the book can get repetitious.
leelulah's review against another edition
2.0
The thesis of this book is that literary modernism (including authors that wouldn't enter the label, too), led to Nazism.
While this book makes you think about the roots of the eugenics movement, it suffers from a bit from disorganization in the first part, attributions of statements that correspond more to characters in works of fictions rather than said authors. Although, in many cases, he backs them up with letters, as others have pointed out. Another rather annoying point is that he continuously has an ambiguous relationship towards Christianity: he begins by introducing the concept of masa damnata as the beginning of individualism but then asserts most of the modernists that worked to ofuscate the understanding of the masses out of contempt for the poor and their education, sexism, eugenics, classism and a sense of entitlement closer to Nietzschean outlook is hardly Christian. It's crazy how these views resemble the alt-right.
His analysis of Graham Greene and his utilitarianism regarding the Catholic Church was called for, but I am not sure how much would Evelyn Waugh fit the same mold. The heroes of this book were Chesterton, Bennett, and in a hard position, people like Joyce and Orwell.
Some authors, like Wells had two chapters for themselves. He kept name dropping Woolf and decrying her contempt for Christianity, but an analysis of her ideas never came in depth, not even her opposition to Nazism because she was married to a Jewish man, as well has her inclusion on a Hitlerian blacklist (http://virginiawoolfblog.com/virginia-woolf-and-hitlers-blacklist/, just in case let me correct myself about Woolf and say I found this: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/may/06/comment.health) among with other figures he mentions here as being essentially okay with Nazism.
I also fail to understand why he constantly brings up Ortega y Gasset, to my knowledge he wasn't that influential in anglo ambients, but I could be wrong. His theory is that this terrible elitism espoused by the likes of D.H. Lawrence, H.G. Wells, T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster, A. Huxley, Gissing and others paved the way for Nazism and Fascism. Not too sure how this is, but I would remind Carey that Wells also defended Stalin even before all proof to the contrary, but very much apologized for statements against the Jews after knowing how horrible the Holocaust was.
Yes, I'm not too sure I can look at H.G. Wells or A. Huxley the same way now, but he was impulsive and probably mentally unstable (I mean, he ended up saying whole extinction of the human race was preferrable).
All in all, could've been better written. I'm critical of mass culture and unnecessarily being a snob, but because art must have a criteria in order to be what it is and reach people, and this is what Carey doesn't seem to understand.
While this book makes you think about the roots of the eugenics movement, it suffers from a bit from disorganization in the first part, attributions of statements that correspond more to characters in works of fictions rather than said authors. Although, in many cases, he backs them up with letters, as others have pointed out. Another rather annoying point is that he continuously has an ambiguous relationship towards Christianity: he begins by introducing the concept of masa damnata as the beginning of individualism but then asserts most of the modernists that worked to ofuscate the understanding of the masses out of contempt for the poor and their education, sexism, eugenics, classism and a sense of entitlement closer to Nietzschean outlook is hardly Christian. It's crazy how these views resemble the alt-right.
His analysis of Graham Greene and his utilitarianism regarding the Catholic Church was called for, but I am not sure how much would Evelyn Waugh fit the same mold. The heroes of this book were Chesterton, Bennett, and in a hard position, people like Joyce and Orwell.
Some authors, like Wells had two chapters for themselves. He kept name dropping Woolf and decrying her contempt for Christianity, but an analysis of her ideas never came in depth, not even her opposition to Nazism because she was married to a Jewish man, as well has her inclusion on a Hitlerian blacklist (http://virginiawoolfblog.com/virginia-woolf-and-hitlers-blacklist/, just in case let me correct myself about Woolf and say I found this: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/may/06/comment.health) among with other figures he mentions here as being essentially okay with Nazism.
I also fail to understand why he constantly brings up Ortega y Gasset, to my knowledge he wasn't that influential in anglo ambients, but I could be wrong. His theory is that this terrible elitism espoused by the likes of D.H. Lawrence, H.G. Wells, T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster, A. Huxley, Gissing and others paved the way for Nazism and Fascism. Not too sure how this is, but I would remind Carey that Wells also defended Stalin even before all proof to the contrary, but very much apologized for statements against the Jews after knowing how horrible the Holocaust was.
Yes, I'm not too sure I can look at H.G. Wells or A. Huxley the same way now, but he was impulsive and probably mentally unstable (I mean, he ended up saying whole extinction of the human race was preferrable).
All in all, could've been better written. I'm critical of mass culture and unnecessarily being a snob, but because art must have a criteria in order to be what it is and reach people, and this is what Carey doesn't seem to understand.
smm231's review against another edition
5.0
Extraordinary book that made me think a lot about how much my tastes in literature are informed by a desire to be "above" the masses. I'll never look at Eliot and Woolf the same.
catpdx's review against another edition
3.0
Overall, an interesting read, though not a necessarily convincing one (though of what exactly he is trying to convince us isn't always clear). It's cherry-picked and not well defended, nor very surprising - Virginia Woolf? A snob, you say?! While he does find some awful passages - and many of the writers he examines did hold some truly loathsome views - Carey has a bad habit of selecting a "shocking" passage with a repellent character and then equating that character's beliefs or shortcomings to the author's. The tactic is repeated and is clearly unfair, to which Carey admits more than once; however, he leaves little room for nuance, and his reading of what the writer might be exploring is always taken as a sign of his or her "snobbery," though what he means by snobbery (or "intellectuals," for that matter) is never very clear either. In the later chapters, there are connections that could be made between dangerous beliefs held by some elite intellectuals and their connection to or enabling of fascism, but this is better done in many other books. His reading of Nietzsche is enough to discredit many of his conjectures, as it is simply taking out of context some of the most famously problematic-sounding passages and blaming Nietzsche for all that followed.
That being said, I still mostly enjoyed reading it. It won't surprise any serious reader of the authors mentioned in the case studies, though, that they had ingrained class prejudices, and he doesn't do much to link those in the case studies together into a bigger picture.
That being said, I still mostly enjoyed reading it. It won't surprise any serious reader of the authors mentioned in the case studies, though, that they had ingrained class prejudices, and he doesn't do much to link those in the case studies together into a bigger picture.
kah's review against another edition
4.0
A useful broadside against prejudices I have unquestioningly been exposed to re snobbery, superiority, popularity, especially interesting when it dismisses Mein Kampf as essentially a logical extension of intellectual thought from the era. If I had criticism to make, it would be that his period starts too late - Dickens, for instance, would have added to this immeasurably, as would Wilkie Collins - and finishes too early. His final paragraphs on literary theory as an heir to intellectualism, especially Barthes, are important, but risk appearing alarmist because he gives so little space to this, arguably his most important point.
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