In Japan (but not just there) you can find newspapers and magazines dedicated entirely to crime news. They often feature sordid stories of wives who poison their husbands, chop their bodies up with a meat cleaver, and dispose of the remains with the rubbish.
(It wasn’t that long ago that in Japan they arrested an elderly woman who, through the years, had killed not one, not two, but three husbands. As they say, third time’s the charm.)
In Italy, crime news is called cronaca nera, black chronicle. Apparently in Naples you can buy a paper that focuses entirely on the camorra, the local mafia, complete with very graphic pictures.
That sort of literature is not exactly high-brow, and tends to attract a working-class readership, but serious authors have also tackled the subject of true crime. One notable example would be Truman Capote’s book In Cold Blood, written in 1966.
It recounts the true story of the brutal murder of a family of four in a small village in Kansas, perpetrated by two ex-convicts, who were later apprehended and sentenced to death.
Capote already went to Kansas before they were caught, and talked with everyone remotely connected to that incident, putting together a staggering 8000 pages of notes during the research (which he later condensed).
An odd choice of subject matter (and quite a departure) from the cultured, sophisticated, eccentric and really, really camp Capote who, only a few years earlier, had written Breakfast at Tiffany’s, a novella about New York’s high society.
In Cold Blood is widely considered a great book (apparently Capote was pissed off that he didn’t win the Nobel prize for it), and it’s been on my “to read” list for a long time. I’ll get to it eventually.
Culture often reflects class distinctions, but of course things are not always clear-cut, and no one can stop you from liking or not liking something.
In medieval Japan, the samurai would usually attend the refined and austere noh theatre. But sometimes they would be seen mingling with the lower classes in the more rowdy kabuki theatre, where the audience would drink while watching a play full of action and sexual innuendos.
It's what people now call "guilty pleasure", something that you're not supposed to enjoy but that you actually do.
On a Saturday evening in London some people will be at the Royal Opera House, watching other people singing in a language they do not understand. Will some spectator, during a lull in the story (I assume there are a few of those in opera), quickly check the football score on his mobile?
When an academic picks up the latest issue of the Times Literary Supplement at a newsagent, will he quickly glance at the cover of Readers' Wives? (And before you say anything, I want to make clear that I never glance at the cover of Readers' Wives. I always take a good look at it.)
I genuinely believe that everything is culture and knowledge. And I mean everything. (When Picasso was asked "What is art?" he replied "What isn't?")
Some of it may be high-brow, and some may be low-brow. Some may be sophisticated, and some may be crass. Some may be deep, and some may be shallow. You don't have to like all of it (no one does), but it all counts. Whatever works for you, it's all good.
