It is an interesting and somewhat terrible time to be poor in the developed countries. Poverty is not just deprivation, of course – it is a form of life. I know all about it, in one way. I’ve been poor for the last six or seven years, and I’ll probably get poorer as time goes on. So I have a day to day acquaintance with the how-to-get-by that makes up poverty in America. But I have no acquaintance with the culture of poverty for the simple reason that the culture of poverty has been so penetrated by cultural forms generated by the middle and upper classes that the older forms have disappeared. My only knowledge of them is from the vast literature that either touched on the poor or sprang directly from them between around 1600 to around 1930. In the U.S., the last bit of this culture fed into the flowering of the American novel in the 50s and 60s. Read Augie March or Native Son, and then pick up your average American literary novel today – on the recommendation of someone I met, I’ve b
“I’m so bored. I hate my life.” - Britney Spears
Das Langweilige ist interessant geworden, weil das Interessante angefangen hat langweilig zu werden. – Thomas Mann
"Never for money/always for love" - The Talking Heads