Today's Baudelaires are hip-hop artists.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Modern rappers play a cultural role similar to the tragic family mentioned.
- In plain terms
- Hip-hop artists are today's versions of famous literary figures.
- What can you take from it?
- Cultural archetypes shift to new forms over time.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What defines a Baudelaire today?
- How does art reflect suffering?
Another view
It reduces complex artists to a single literary comparison.
More from Jonathan Franzen
An ink bottle, which now seems impossibly quaint, was still thinkable as a symbol in 1970.
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