Some people, perhaps many people, don’t enjoy American writer Jonathan Franzen and from their point of view, not without reason. Though his beautifully crafted prose is universally praised, his new highbrow but easy-to-read novel, Purity, is yet again greeted with controversy.
Franzen is provocative for several reasons, one of which I’ll use as a springboard to a subject I wish to address. That is, though he actually rejects difficulty and inaccessibility as aesthetic ideals, his work invariably heats-up the centuries-old polarizing argument about what constitutes highbrow and middlebrow cultural interest.
Highbrow is a term often used derogatorily to describe pretentious people who think their wow-look-at-my taste is proof of their moral and intellectual superiority. In other quarters, though, highbrow describes those who engage culture not because of status anxiety but to expand their minds. (If cultural pursuits elevated their place in the pecking order, that would be great, too. Right?)
Middlebrow most often refers to those who enjoy culture to the extent that it is entertaining and/or endorses the sensibilities and normatives that resonate with their “comfort zones.” But middlebrows aren’t a unified group of people; they have their own pecking order. For example, those disposed by their programmed inclinations to PBS, the New Yorker, craft beer, and bird-watching think they beat—by a long-shot—those disposed to reality tv, People, Budweiser and fan-football. On the other hand, those disposed to reality tv and a cold Bud, etc. may privilege and tout their no-airs authenticity and Joe Biden man-of-the-people inclusiveness.
We who are interested in autonomy and life like to be entertained (and are just as tiresomely disposed as anyone else to flaunt “good life” stuff). But we also welcome art that in its complexity and range disturbs our complacency. This art is what we might term highbrow. (And in this highbrow manner, Franzen, in his new novel, examines the punitive puritan hysteria that fuels much public outrage, censoriousness and shaming.) We also welcome art—Shakespeare's is a good example—that illuminates the egoism, selfishness and self-deception that is frequently indifferent to the dignity of others and mires one’s own experience in disappointment and discontent.
And, of course, literature is not the only means to a larger perspective on who we are and the world we inhabit. Music and dance can awaken us to the dynamic, even haunting forces that propel and inhibit us. And the strikingly dissimilar beliefs of those raised with different histories on different terrain are made evident by particular paintings and sculptures.
In short, we welcome art that challenges our inquisitive, deliberative and contemplative inwardness. This is not because such study will make us “better” or more superior to others; we are who we are. We study art, including the art of autonomy and life, because it is pertinent to our lives and because we would hope that such exposure would affect the architecture of our personal space and the artistry of our personal choices. Moreover, it is a claim made of the humanities that the study of art will extend the autonomy and reach of our compassion—our imaginative identification with another person or persons—and our utility on behalf of the empathy.
Highbrow or middlebrow, we are subject to the demands of nature and the civilizing processes. Having chosen to study and integrate the art of autonomy, we realize that the liberating distinction of our school of thought actually lies in the paradox of its proposition: Specifically, that despite our bound and determined nature and the seeming intractability of our inclinations, we take responsibility for our autonomy and life, for being cause in the matter through choice, and are, as a result, truly responsible for our fate and our experience.
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Arnold Siegel is the founder of Autonomy and Life and the leader of its Retreat Workshops and Advanced Classes.