Pretentiousness: Why it Matters - Softcover

Fox, Dan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1804270938 ISBN 13: 9781804270936

Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2024

Synopsis

What is pretentiousness? Why do we despise it? And more controversially: why is it vital to a thriving culture? In this brilliant, passionate essay, Dan Fox argues that it has always been an essential mechanism of the arts, from the most wildly successful pop music and fashion through to the most recondite avenues of literature and the visual arts. Pretentiousness: Why it Matters unpacks the uses and abuses of the term, tracing its connections to theatre, politics and class, advocating critical imagination over knee-jerk accusations of elitism or simple fear of the new and the different. This book is a timely defence of pretentiousness as a necessity for innovation and diversity in our culture.

About this title

About the Author

Dan Fox is a writer, filmmaker and musician. He is the author of Limbo (2018) and Pretentiousness: Why it Matters (2016), and is the co-director of the BBC film Other, Like Me (2020). For twenty years he was an editor and staff writer at Frieze magazine, and his essays and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of publications and journals. He is based in New York.

From the Back Cover

What is pretentiousness? Why are we afraid of it? And more controversially: why is it vital to a thriving culture? Drawing on the author's own experiences growing up and working at the more radical edges of the arts, this book is a timely defence of pretentiousness as a necessity for innovation and diversity in our culture.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1804270938
• ISBN 13: 9781804270936
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176