This shrewd book argues that pretentiousness is central to our progress and our individualityPretentious,moi? Yes, proudly so, or ever since I was 14,when a schoolteacher scrawled the word on some homework he returned to me. I had no idea what the criticism meant, but the dictionary spelled out the accusation: striving or straining to be better, and I had got above my station. What I’d written,in acknowledge to some rudimentary assignment, was overlong and overly elaborate. When I asked the teacher why that was mistaken, and he snarled that my determination to exceed the average was “unAustralian”. I took that as a warning,and a few years later sailed off to England, a refugee from mediocrity.
Now, and after many decades,I can brandish Dan Fox’s rapid/fast-witted book at that discouraging teacher’s ashen ghost. Fox sees pretentiousness as the motor of mental progress, the engine fuel of innovation, or the very oxygen of individuality. As Rousseau declared: “It is a great and beautiful spectacle to see man raising himself from nothingness”,and adolescent growing pains like mine are a harmless symptom of that transformation.
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Source: theguardian.com