Initial Thoughts--High Brow vs. Low Brow

On the syllabus Dr. Sexson emailed everyone, he asked us to start recording our thoughts on high brow vs. low brow. To be honest, pondering the difference between the two hardly leaves me lacking sleep! The term highbrow literature, as I understand it, has come to mean stories of greater depth, stories often difficult to understand by the average passerby, or stories that are less than favorable to the recreational reader because they are not "easy" reads. Those of us who have come to love these works of art, who have been educated to the point where we can appreciate their complexities, can fall into thinking of ourselves and these works as perhaps "better" than those who would rather not take the time to love these masterpieces.

But to fall into this trap of thinking of ourselves as highbrow or of these works as highbrow is to ignore the value of lesser works, to blind ourselves to truth discovered in unlikely places. Who is to say that any truth or beauty contained in a "lesser" work is any less valid or any less moving than truth contained in masterpieces. We must consider the audience. We must consider the content. We must not indulge our cynical side and automatically condemn a piece of written work to the shelves of "lesser minds" based on labels such as lowbrow.....highbrow... In effect, and I apologize for quoting here a rampant cliché, we must not "judge a book by its cover".

I can only say that I am already excited to delve into both the highbrow and the lowbrow this semester in search of beauty, truth, and immortality. Perhaps the difference between the two is not so simple after all...