ROQUEFORT CHEESE—HIGH BROW, MIDDLE BROW OR LOW BROW?
ROQUEFORT CHEESE—HIGH BROW, MIDDLE BROW OR LOW BROW? The Clement Greenberg/ Dwight Macdonald break down of culture into Mass Culture and High Culture led to a famous set of articles by Russell Lynes which look now like a direct parody of Mcdonald and Greenberg, although at the time, Lines was described merely as writing with “tongue in cheek”. Here is an article about Lynes from Life magazine in 1949, which broke people into four categories: High Brow, Upper-Middle Brow, Lower Middle-Brow and Low Brow. Kids, I remember that I was fascinated by this article (or probably a later one, though I remember the cartoons in this article). I remember discussing with my brother Elmer how our family fit into these categories. I remember the salad categories. We sometimes had iceberg lettuce with store dressing, which would make us Lower Middle Brow. But we sometimes had Roquefort dressing and tomatoes with our salad, which would make us Upper Middle Brow (High Brow evidently avoided Roquefort, as is confirmed by Winthrop Sargeant in an accompanying article in which he affirms that he is a High Brow and in support points out that: “I eschew Roquefort in my salad.”