Adding another angle, more pragmatically the further back in time one goes, the less has survived. This of course is partly due to previous quality judgements, but availability is an issue. Therefore it is much easier to get your kind of cultural literacy - up until the last century, then it gets messy, so people might think ochwhyboffa and just read what the loudest voices recommend. Any good writer though has read a lot, or as a director once said any film maker should know and be interested in all art forms (also before today's film makers came along; even mainstream/single female director Nancy Myers nod to Bluebeard's Eight Wife is like the only seed in a morass of nothing but can't elevate her film to quality anymore). But guess what, I stopped finding enjoyment in obvious references decades ago. I loved Pratchett long before his fame and grew more and more bored and frustrated when L-shaped Space kept pointing out the bleeding obvious. I can't stand Jasper Fforde (I'm still waiting for Tristram Shandy though, so eagerly). I appreciate footnotes in historical texts but they are always about the obvious, and I waste days checking them, interrupting my reading only to be annoyed and frustrated because I KNOW THAT TELL ME SOMETHING ABOUT XYZ WHYYYYDONTYOU. It's worse in TV where the "why why whyyyy" or "it's people" once was a very funny insider nod but has been regurgitated so many times that in SGU it is tedious, made unbearable by then BEING EXPLAINED. On screen. By the person who said it.
It was lovely the way MP did, I saw my transition in Pratchett, and now I find nobody who does literary references enjoyably anymore. Maybe there the popcultural references still have a small chance, since authors don't expect everyone to get it and therefore it's just a bonus. But see my Planet of Apes comment above.
PS: I also went from reading challenging stuff in my teens to deeply despising "high culture" in all forms, esp. the accessible new novels that were only considered good because the critics never read widely. But much later I have to accept that nobody really writes for me. Genre is atrocious; where I was looking for non-male-written love stories there is only sick 350 pages bodice ripping. Everyone writes Scififantasy and Vampires have sucked the bookmarket dry. I spent the last years in crime and mysteries but the female written is often shopping-list like, the male sexist, and the lauded newcomers write what I'd read elsewhere decades ago.
So, did you read all that? Because though I'm now bored by Don Quijote, which I had been so looking forward too (endless footnotes only telling the title of what the author had basically already mocked in the text, which in itself is meta on heroic knight stories ...), I find Kafka amusing and some other literary writers spot on - except they don't write much more than I do in my notebook. Then again that proves they are closer to me than any popcultural writer can be?
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Any good writer though has read a lot, or as a director once said any film maker should know and be interested in all art forms (also before today's film makers came along; even mainstream/single female director Nancy Myers nod to Bluebeard's Eight Wife is like the only seed in a morass of nothing but can't elevate her film to quality anymore).
But guess what, I stopped finding enjoyment in obvious references decades ago. I loved Pratchett long before his fame and grew more and more bored and frustrated when L-shaped Space kept pointing out the bleeding obvious. I can't stand Jasper Fforde (I'm still waiting for Tristram Shandy though, so eagerly). I appreciate footnotes in historical texts but they are always about the obvious, and I waste days checking them, interrupting my reading only to be annoyed and frustrated because I KNOW THAT TELL ME SOMETHING ABOUT XYZ WHYYYYDONTYOU. It's worse in TV where the "why why whyyyy" or "it's people" once was a very funny insider nod but has been regurgitated so many times that in SGU it is tedious, made unbearable by then BEING EXPLAINED. On screen. By the person who said it.
It was lovely the way MP did, I saw my transition in Pratchett, and now I find nobody who does literary references enjoyably anymore. Maybe there the popcultural references still have a small chance, since authors don't expect everyone to get it and therefore it's just a bonus. But see my Planet of Apes comment above.
PS: I also went from reading challenging stuff in my teens to deeply despising "high culture" in all forms, esp. the accessible new novels that were only considered good because the critics never read widely. But much later I have to accept that nobody really writes for me. Genre is atrocious; where I was looking for non-male-written love stories there is only sick 350 pages bodice ripping. Everyone writes Scififantasy and Vampires have sucked the bookmarket dry. I spent the last years in crime and mysteries but the female written is often shopping-list like, the male sexist, and the lauded newcomers write what I'd read elsewhere decades ago.
So, did you read all that? Because though I'm now bored by Don Quijote, which I had been so looking forward too (endless footnotes only telling the title of what the author had basically already mocked in the text, which in itself is meta on heroic knight stories ...), I find Kafka amusing and some other literary writers spot on - except they don't write much more than I do in my notebook. Then again that proves they are closer to me than any popcultural writer can be?