For a long time I have been against the idea of intelligent people writing intelligent pieces of literature which is first of all intended for intelligent people, but in the long term has messages within it that should be heard by the majority of the population. The best examples are politicians who when addressing their nation, in whichever guise they choose, make little sense to a lot of those who should be listening to them (there is perhaps a political reason for this, but for sake of argument we will ignore this).
But then, a bit late I know (but you need to start somewhere), I discover low/middle and high brow styles of writing. Revelation! Low brow is literature written by the ‘unintelligent’ with no intention of sounding intelligent; highbrow is written by the culturally intelligent with the full intention of sounding intelligent; and middlebrow is literature written by the intelligent which is intended for the populace.
So my mindset has always come from a middlebrow point of view. Hurrah, yet another ideological trait I thought I had some uniqueness with that has in fact been discussed, debated and forgotten about before!
But then if I were to consider myself middlebrow, would that not be an acceptance by me of some highish level of intelligence? What if instead there was another brow created for people like me, people who want to be intelligent, who try to write as if they are intelligent but not trying to show it, but who are not. Other brows have been mentioned before, broadbrow for example; but here I proposal a whole new brow, a brow as yet without a name – join me non-culturally intelligent but intelligent-trying writers! Let’s give ourselves a name!
Interesting thoughts…..
Posted by thecatsman | December 25, 2009, 4:24 amHi Matt,
I got here via the What’s Hot panel on the WordPress dashboard. Nice short, intelligent piece. I totally agree with your last paragraph. There really is no need to show [off] intelligence; if there is any, it will come through with no effort.
Actually, the lowbrow, midbrow and highbrow situations could come in several permutations. Most people know (or recognise) the highbrow stuff already – it is what it is.
Lowbrow could be subdivided into the “unintelligent” writing (a) with no intention of sounding intelligent, which you already said, or (b) with full intention of sounding more intelligent than their intelligence. There’s a lot of the (b) category in academic writing, which helps explain why university degrees the world over are taking longer and longer to finish.
The midbrow stuff is interesting. Could it be (a) the intelligent writing intelligently but in populist tones or (b) the intelligent writing popularly that also provokes some degree of intelligent thinking? I think there’s a fine line between the two.
I’m unsure about any other brows – to me, it might just be a case of the highbrow browbeating others into thinking that the other brows are substandard and the highbrow is the only yardstick to measure everything by.
I don’t know. I’m not an expert in this. What say you?
Cheers from Hong Kong – Robert
Posted by thenakedlistener | December 25, 2009, 6:04 aminteresting little thought-piece, i confess i spent some time wondering where my own brows were as i thought of how to address perhaps a unified brow theory
while attempts thus far have come across as quite inelegant, perhaps we were awaiting this other brow of which you hint to tie the whole thing up, if this can be realized, then perhaps we need just the proper sense of humor to name the beast; what else but the unibrow?
a pluckish little name no?
Posted by finite jester | March 9, 2010, 5:59 am