Pretentiousness

Dan Fox is a British writer, musician, editor, and filmmaker currently living in New York. He is the co-editor of frieze, Europe’s foremost magazine of contemporary art and culture.

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice“Reading Fox is like watching a gymnast perform a floor routine. He vaults and tumbles ideas and arguments, seamlessly incorporating criticism, pop culture, and stories from his own life, and sticks every landing.” —The Los Angeles Review of Books“Epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, and veritable. Pretentiousness will never look the same.” —Elif Batuman“Fox . . . offers a defense of acting like someone you’re not. It’s the way we cross boundaries and discover new lands.” —The New York Post“Fox has written a hopeful and stirring defense not just of pretentiousness in all its forms, but of the value of art itself.” —Slate“Fox is attuned to the way tastes feel important because of everything that goes into them—class, education, upbringing—making them the embodiment of where we were from, and where we want to be.” —The New York Times Sunday Book Review“[Fox] elucidates in an intelligent and conversational style the many complex layers of aesthetic, class and social discomfort that often arise in the face of pretentiousness.” —The Chicago Tribune“This shrewd book argues that pretentiousness is central to our progress and our individuality.” —The Guardian“One of this book’s delights is its subtle and witty handling of the relevant etymologies.” —The Times Literary Supplement“What Fox did with this little book is brilliant. It isn’t looking down on anybody, rather it’s Fox questioning why we’re so hellbent on looking down on intelligence, on loving great art, and why ‘Anti-intellectualism’ seems to be so in fashion when that in itself is really its own brand of pretentiousness.” —Vol. 1 Brooklyn“Fox’s book is an elegant and convincing defense.” —Vulture“Fox is talking about social mobility: how a working-class boy who appreciates the avant garde might well be improving his life. ‘We should encourage these people,’ says Fox, ‘not pillory them as pretentious.’” —Monocle