The Barbarians
An Essay on the Mutation of Culture
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
From one of Italy's most respected literary voices, a manifesto on the state of global culture and how connectivity is changing the way we experience it. For the gatekeepers of traditional high culture, the rise of young ambitious outsiders has indeed seemed like nothing short of a barbarian invasion. In this concise and powerful manifesto, Alessandro Baricco explores a handful of realms that have been "plundered"-wine, soccer, music, and books-and extrapolates that it is not a case of old values against new but a widespread mutation that we are all part of, leading toward a different way of having experiences and creating meaning.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this insightful book, which reads as an episodic essay, Baricco (Emmaus) addresses the widespread fear at least among intellectuals and academics that we are facing a cultural apocalypse, that civilized culture is being sacked by predators with no culture or history. These are his titular barbarians. Baricco begins by discussing three specific areas in which he sees the effects of this so-called apocalypse: Hollywood wine, with its appealing color and lack of complexity; soccer with a tendency toward middlingness, and a book publishing industry driven by market logic. But, he says and herein lays the main argument of his book these are not, in fact, irrational, culturally destructive changes. Rather, these changes evidence a mutation, a sort of mental and architectural restructuring that results from a shifting cultural landscape dominated by forces such as Google. Baricco characterizes this mutation as a fundamental change in the idea of what constitutes experience and how meaning is made. Though often theoretical, Barrico is an excellent guide and presents each short installment in a highly conversational, op-ed style. Ultimately the book is an optimistic defense for this mutation, a mutation that concerns everyone, without exception.
