“Tacky is about the power of pop culture—like any art—to imprint itself on our lives and shape our experiences.”
We were about to stick this in our next print issue, but then we realized that it goes down on Wednesday, the day before the Dig comes out.
Still, it seemed like something that you ought to know about. Here’s the listing as it would have looked if we didn’t screw up …
Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer
“Rax King is a James Beard award-nominated writer and host of the podcast Low Culture Boil.” Tacky is “an irreverent and charming debut essay collection about the joys of low pop culture and bad taste, exploring coming of age in the 2000s in the age of Hot Topic, Creed, and frosted lip gloss—from the James Beard Award-nominated writer of the Catapult column Store-Bought Is Fine, Tacky is about the power of pop culture—like any art—to imprint itself on our lives and shape our experiences, no matter one’s commitment to “good” taste. These fourteen essays are a nostalgia-soaked antidote to the millennial generation’s obsession with irony, putting the aesthetics we hate to love—snakeskin pants, Sex and the City, Cheesecake Factory’s gargantuan menu—into kinder and sharper perspective. The result is a collection that captures the personal and generational experience of finding joy in caring just a little too much with clarity, heartfelt honesty, and Rax King’s trademark humor.” Moderated by Daniel M. Lavery.”
[Online via Brookline Booksmith. 8:30pm/$0 – $24.95. raxking-daniellavery-brookline-2021.eventbrite.com]
Dig Staff means this article was a collaborative effort. Teamwork, as we like to call it.