Class and creativity...

...Notes on Kampf

Timberg’s emphasis on “humble service”—a phrase loaded with overtones of spirituality and enslavement—troubled me more than his character sketches. Retail work is certainly low-wage service work, but it is often as spiritually fulfilling as pumping gas—just with more promos. To ascribe self-effacing nobility to working in a video store, record store, or bookshop is to promote the sentimental idea that mere proximity to culture outweighs the benefits of decent pay. Even before the Internet and the chains began their ascent in the late 1990s, there were few people working in independent bookstores whose salaries put them anywhere near the middle class.