The link above is in response to the article we read in class about The New Inquiry literary journal.
Gawker, a gossipy kind of website, claims that the New York Times is celebrating "pretentious, literary 25-year-olds who want to spend time with similarly pretentious, literary 25-year-olds."
It also claims that the Style section of NYT is meant either for "people who see nothing problematic with being told by The New York Times what's cool, and think of the Style section is a straight-ahead, unironic record of hip trends and cool people" or "This audience [that] reads the Style section, week after week, and thinks "what the fuck is wrong with rich people?"
Gawker claims that NYT Style uses tactics such as:
- Breathless descriptions: "[S]helves of yellowing volumes of Dostoyevsky and Camus reaching to the ceiling and air thick with the musty smell of stale tobacco and old paperbacks"
- Frequent references to clothes and and other cultural signifiers: "[D]ressed in untucked oxford shirts and off-brand jeans, mingled around a rickety table packed with half-empty Jim Beam bottles"
- Required mention of Ivy League degrees: "REBECCA CHAPMAN, who has a master of arts in English and comparative literature from Columbia University"; "Willie Osterweil, 25, an aspiring novelist who graduated magna cum laude from Cornell in 2009"
- Concern about attractiveness of subjects: "Despite the fact that everyone was young and attractive, no one seemed to flirt"
I didn't even notice this came from the Style section, nor do I really care. I just found this on a friend's blog, and remembered we had read it in class. Gawker seems to have some resentment toward the people featured and the group featuring the article. I doubt the group meant to come off that way, it wasn't their fault they were portrayed in a way that made them seem pretentious.
Hana
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