Philip Hensher

Visions of suburbia

The suburbs fuel creativity, says Philip Hensher. So why do writers and artists look down on them?

issue 06 August 2016

Art is aspiring; hungry; acutely aware of what it could become, and of what it could lack; longs for safety and reaches out in speculative attempts to do something new; exists on the outer edges of lives, looking inwards with hopes, some day, to be more essential. Art, literature and music are, in short, suburbs to the grands projets of our lives at their most significant.

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