Culture Briefs

Downside to reading

“In a society obsessed with inane reality shows … is reading books ever a bad thing? According to the New York Times, it can be — especially when it comes to romance. …

“What if you dig Proust, and she loves Picoult (as in Jodi, the best-selling, if decidedly middlebrow, author of works like the current chart-topper ’Change of Heart’)? Or your beloved lives for Jane Austen, while you prefer Dean Koontz? Some of the so-called deal breakers in the Times story include Ayn Rand’s ’Atlas Shrugged’ (’grandiosely heartless “philosophy” ’) and Jonathan Franzen’s ’The Corrections’ (’ “Overrated!” “Brilliant!” “Overrated!” “Brilliant!” ’).

“But what about all the mass-market paperbacks out there? Does someone reading the Oprah-sanctioned ’The Secret’ tell you they’re an earnest, soulful truth-seeker, or a flaky quick-fix sucker? … Or, conversely, the guy conspicuously carting around a battered copy of some Nabokov novel he’s clearly never read past the 10th page? Is pretending to read classic literature more egregious than reading stuff you like, even if it’s not considered ’literary’?”

— Leah Greenblatt, writing on “What’s Your Literary Deal Breaker?” March 31 at the Entertainment Weekly blog Popwatch

Pity the rich

“For decades, social scientists, policy wonks, and politicians have studied and debated what’s come to be known as the ’culture of poverty.’ The consensus: A group of Americans is set apart from the mainstream by geography, class, and income. Its members adhere to norms that don’t apply to the rest of society and engage in self-destructive behavior that imposes significant costs on the nation at large.

“We don’t hear as much about the culture of poverty these days. Perhaps it’s because the market turmoil is making us all feel a little poorer. Or perhaps it’s because a highly visible group is now exhibiting all the appearances of the underclass: the overclass. Forget welfare queens and the culture of poverty. Think Wall Street kings and the culture of affluence.

“Critics point to a pervasive sense of victimhood in the underclass. But listen to what Bear Stearns CEO Alan Schwartz told the troops after his firm succumbed to wounds that were almost entirely self-inflicted. ’We here are a collective victim of violence,’ he said. Yep, just another case of the Man keeping the Man down.”

— Daniel Gross, writing on “Rich Men Behaving Badly: Meet the super-rich, the dysfunctional class threatening American values,” March 29 at Slate.com

Not-so-Gr8 for baby

“It might not be every parent’s idea of a ’gr8’ way to name a baby. But our growing habit of using text messages to communicate appears to be having an impact on what we call our children. Abbreviated versions of traditional Christian names are appearing on birth certificates along with ’original’ ways of spelling which even include punctuation marks. Anne has been changed to An, Connor to Conna and Laura to Lora.

“There were reportedly six boys who were named Cam’ron instead of Cameron, and according to the online parenting club Bounty, one girl born last month was born Flicity. And basic changes to spelling have led to numerous Samiuls (Samuel) and reports of 23 different versions of Isabelle or Isabella, from Izzabella to Yzabel. …

“Albert Mehrabian, a psychology professor at the University of California who has researched the impact of irregular names, found that ’less attractive characteristics were attributed to individuals with less conventionally spelled names. … Unconventional spelling connoted less masculinity for men and less femininity for women and more anxiety and neuroticism were attributed to those with less common names.’ ”

— Luke Salkeld, writing on “More Parents Using Txt Language to Make Their Child’s Name Gr8,” April 1 in the Daily Mail