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Bohemia: The Protoculture Then and Now
Locates the roots of the bohemian tradition in the early nineteenth century and traces the course and assesses the significance of its mutation into the protoculture
392 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1978
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 19, 2007
I am definitely enjoying this book. I feel like I am learning about the history of artists and bohemia, and incidental other little trivia. A lot of personal details, a lot of artistic & historical details, and put together in a way as to make it interesting. Still in the early chapters on early Parisian bohemian history (I've read Victor Hugo through Murger right now) and very much can't wait to read more. ...
Finished it. Horrible last few chapters. Stopped being funny in how obviously it was written in the 70s and started being a combination of sad, inaccurate, and overblown. The history sections were very good, the philosophy, and guesses about the future not so good.
Finished it. Horrible last few chapters. Stopped being funny in how obviously it was written in the 70s and started being a combination of sad, inaccurate, and overblown. The history sections were very good, the philosophy, and guesses about the future not so good.
February 1, 2026
3.5 stars
I took a large break in the middle of reading this and read parts 1-3 in the fall of last year, have just now finished parts 4-6 and the book. I wouldn't call this a history book as it is scattered and vague. It is a culture study, but lacks the objectivity assumed of one. Yes bias abounds! Who on earth cares! In an age where all news is propaganda, all mass produced and consumed media is propaganda, history can be spoken of and taught with emotional bias towards its poor, its artists, its Black and brown peoples, its dopeheads and acid kids. My issues come mostly from the organisation of its contents and the very late introduction of what I viewed as integral concepts of the theory Miller seems to be outlining. Mostly history, the book begins and ends with an idealistic summative proposal for what will come after humanity's long transitional age.
The difficulty comes in how the forward countercultural movement and momentum towards integration, presentness, life during life rather than after death, has disappeared in the modern technological world. Writing from mainly 1975 and publishing in 1977, Miller could account for neither the bureaucratic uberfascist global surveillance state that would come to dominance nor the utterly repressed hyperindividualised self-policing isolation of the modern social world. It makes you want to sob like a kid! There was a time where the machine of military-industrial progress had been slowed and cracked enough that a future of art-for-art as culture, not counterculture, was in near tangibility, visible distance. This should be direly inspiring (live harder & NOW) but must equally be nigh crushing.
Understanding is strength toward action and change. The comprehensive historical components of this book build a simple and specific but very accessible base of context for understanding that can be used to learn, communicate, act. This is not a revolutionary text—only in an era of thoughtcrime is it radical in any sense at all. But it is a kinder, more honest, less self-censored inspection of the formation and history of Bohemian tradition than an average history text on any subject. A lot more fun too. It comes definitively from a human soul.
I took a large break in the middle of reading this and read parts 1-3 in the fall of last year, have just now finished parts 4-6 and the book. I wouldn't call this a history book as it is scattered and vague. It is a culture study, but lacks the objectivity assumed of one. Yes bias abounds! Who on earth cares! In an age where all news is propaganda, all mass produced and consumed media is propaganda, history can be spoken of and taught with emotional bias towards its poor, its artists, its Black and brown peoples, its dopeheads and acid kids. My issues come mostly from the organisation of its contents and the very late introduction of what I viewed as integral concepts of the theory Miller seems to be outlining. Mostly history, the book begins and ends with an idealistic summative proposal for what will come after humanity's long transitional age.
The difficulty comes in how the forward countercultural movement and momentum towards integration, presentness, life during life rather than after death, has disappeared in the modern technological world. Writing from mainly 1975 and publishing in 1977, Miller could account for neither the bureaucratic uberfascist global surveillance state that would come to dominance nor the utterly repressed hyperindividualised self-policing isolation of the modern social world. It makes you want to sob like a kid! There was a time where the machine of military-industrial progress had been slowed and cracked enough that a future of art-for-art as culture, not counterculture, was in near tangibility, visible distance. This should be direly inspiring (live harder & NOW) but must equally be nigh crushing.
Understanding is strength toward action and change. The comprehensive historical components of this book build a simple and specific but very accessible base of context for understanding that can be used to learn, communicate, act. This is not a revolutionary text—only in an era of thoughtcrime is it radical in any sense at all. But it is a kinder, more honest, less self-censored inspection of the formation and history of Bohemian tradition than an average history text on any subject. A lot more fun too. It comes definitively from a human soul.
December 28, 2009
This book has some interesting ideas, particularly that Bohemian aesthetic values can and should become a the basis of a positive cultural transformation. However the author's language is overdone. He also does not develop many of his brash offhanded assertions sufficiently for them to be persuasive, even to a sympathetic reader. D. Paul Schafer espouses some of the same core ideas in his Revolution or Renaissance with a more sober pen, but his treatment is pedantic and doesn't invoke the Bohemian driving force at all, even though it is both pertinent and cool.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews