When culture works -- Disappearing clerks and the lost sense of place -- Of permatemps and content serfs -- Indie Rock's endless road -- The architecture meltdown -- Idle dreamers: curse of the creative class -- The end of print -- Self-inflicted wounds -- Lost in the supermarket: winner-take-all.
Summary
"Change is no stranger to us in the twenty-first century. All of us must constantly adjust to an evolving world, to transformation and innovation. But for many thousands of creative artists, a torrent of recent changes has made it all but impossible to earn a living. A persistent economic recession, social shifts, and technological change have combined to put our artists--from graphic designers to indie-rock musicians, from architects to booksellers--out of work. This important book looks deeply and broadly into the roots of the crisis of the creative class in America and tells us why it matters. Scott Timberg considers the human cost as well as the unintended consequences of shuttered record stores, decimated newspapers, music piracy, and a general attitude of indifference. He identifies social tensions and contradictions--most concerning the artist's place in society--that have plunged the creative class into a fight for survival. Timberg shows how America's now-collapsing middlebrow culture--a culture once derided by intellectuals like Dwight Macdonald--appears, from today's vantage point, to have been at least a Silver Age. Timberg's reporting is essential reading for anyone who works in the world of culture, knows someone who does, or cares about the work creative artists produce"-- "Social criticism about the Internet, the economic downturn, and post-industrial culture that considers the human costs and unintended consequences of the new world on artists and other cultural workers--the shuttering of bookstores, the collapse of newspapers, the toll of music piracy"--
