Middlebrow and nobrow: Tracing patterns across culture

Abstract

Chapter 4, Beth Driscoll’s “Middlebrow and Nobrow: Tracing Patterns Across Culture” sets the stage for the analysis of nobrow by way of its kissing cousin—middlebrow. Where middlebrow operates in a cultural space between the elites and the masses, nobrow is a different kind of animal altogether. How different? We take a behind-the-scenes look at literary prizes on the way to a couple of murder investigations, a love-struck geneticist, and a backyard barbeque gone horribly wrong—all in the name of illuminating the junction where the elites and the masses intersect, as they do more often than many highbrows care to admit.