Culture And Society And Stuff

It's with some relief that I record here that I've just finished Raymond Williams's Culture and Society 1780- 1950. The relief stems from the fact that this means I've actually got some serious reading done after a period of something close to complete turpitude on that front. I didn't really read much in June, when I was relatively free from the Toad, work, and I've been so busy since that I've only managed a page here, a page there from the books I'm supposed to be engaged in. In fact, I started this reading of Culture and Society back in June, it being one of my 'KL books'.

It's a book that I've often dipped into over the years, since acquiring it back in my university days when it was sort of regarded as a text that everyone should read. Since it features in part a series of chapters on individual writers (e.g., Carlyle, Lawrence, Orwell) it certainly lends itself to dipping and I suppose at one time I would have claimed to have actually read it, but it takes a sequential read-through in its entirety to appreciate the breadth of Williams's conception of culture and its relation to society. 

Many segments, especially those on the twentieth century, now seem dated in the terms used by the writer and the understandable innocence regarding developments in modes of communication that make his conception of mass communication seem distinctly quaint. But I felt I gained much from Williams, not least an understanding of the historical seriousness of his concerns.