Delivery Pizza

Living in Southern California all of my life, Snow Crash is not only a predictable future, but in a sense, a descriptive present for me. Like Jameson's article expresses, there is a sense of post-modernism from the novel that does not only make room for, but almost worships the culture of dime-store novels, sitcoms, and gated communities. In a world like this, pizza delivery is an art and the Mob is an accepted fact of life.

Much like it is now. True, we still have a central government, and I think the only Pizza Delivery University is probably an online scam, but how much farther until that is a reality? And an accepted one at that. Hiro is proud of his job, despite the stated low salary in comparison to the designer of a billboard ad. Is this the return of the artisan or the demise of culture?

I think it is often wondered if there will be another Shakespeare, another Dickens, or Austen. But when one considers the present, and then considers the present for each of these established masters of literature, it was not much different. Shakespeare's plays were the equivalent of SNL, but maybe with a little less social critique. Dickens was paid by the word, and Austen's Pride and Prejudice was considered to be in a frivolous form (the novel), and on a frivolous topic at that.

So we must wonder - is there really a death of culture, a death of finery - or simply the changing of it from what was once considered inferior to superior. I'm not sure if I accept that explanation myself, or if I consider it the blindly innocent approach, but I enjoy delivery pizza just as much as the last person...