In The Glass Bead Game, Hermann Hesse writes of an age preceding that of the highly intellectual Game, as an age when scholars and writers produced trivia.
Some extracts:
‘Among the favourite subjects of such essays were anecdotes taken from the lives or correspondence of famous men and women. They bore titles as “Friedrich Nietzsche and Women’s Fashions of 1870”, or "The Composer Rossini’s Favourite Dishes", or “The Role of the Lapdog in the Lives of Great Courtesans”, and so on. Another popular type of article was the historical background piece about what was being talked about among the well-to-do, such as “The Dream of Creating God Through the Centuries” or “Psycho-Chemical Experiments in Influencing the Weather”, and hundreds of similar titles.’
Hesse also goes on to describe how celebrities were asked their opinion on practically everything, from the causes of financial crises to the merits of being a bachelor. ‘All that mattered in these pieces was to link a well-known name with a topic of current interest.’
Does any of this sound familiar today?
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