I suspect that Brooks is to culture what prescriptivists are to language: empirically vacuous and largely worthless to the actual study of language (except the super-important project of bolting bits of Latin grammar onto English, because Classics).
I’m a fan of the UChicago ‘great books’ approach; but it has unfortunate effects on some percentage of the class. The ones who absorb the ‘here are some enduring and enlightening texts that will enrich your understanding’ message are fine. The ones who append ‘because they are basically the highest expressions of Culture and everything else is degenerate drivel’ you just give thanks that they aren’t majoring in something like Econ that will probably place them at the levers of too much power and avoid them socially from then on…
