Review: James Joyce, like Kim Kardashian, understood a sex scandal could be good for business

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Book ReviewIf you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.W.David Marx’s doomscroll through 21st century pop culture, “Blank Space,” is largely a catalog of cringe.

Kardashians keep barging in, joined by Paris Hilton, Milo Yiannopoulos, MAGA-hatted trolls, latter-day Hitler enthusiast Kanye West and more.The collection of Z-listers in the book runs so deep that there’s no room for even some of the most infamous Kevin Federline-level hacks to fit into its pages.

In Marx’s reckoning, we’ve lived with 25 years of mediocrity, with no end in sight.Couture is now fast fashion.

Art is IP, AI, the MCU and NFTs.Patronage has become grift.“Where society once encouraged and provided an abundance of cultural invention, there is now a blank space,” Marx writes.

Yes, he’s side-eyeing Taylor Swift, or at least her savvy-bordering-on-cynical approach to fandom.The title of the book, after all, is a nod to one of her hits.

This might seem like get-off-my-lawn grousing from a critic who misses the good old days.But Marx’s critique isn’t rooted in pop culture preferences so much as concern with the ruthless ways that capitalism and the internet have manipulated the way we consume, discuss and make use of the arts.

Algorithms engineered for sameness and profit have effectively sidelined provocation.Revanchist conservatism, he suggests, has rushed to fill the vacuum.Weren’t we doing OK not so long ago? The Obama era might have been a high point of inclusivity on the surface, but the past decade has demonstrated just how thin that cultural veneer was.

As Marx writes, in a brutal deadpan: “Trump won the election.Not even Lena Dunham’s pro Hillary rap video as MC Pantsuit for Funny or Die could convince America to elect its first female president.” MAGA, Marx argues, wasn’t simply a ...