I used to work with this guy who was a college dropout, highly intelligent, well read, and very insecure. He was much better read in English literature than I could ever hope to be (maybe his major was English, I dunno.) Then he met this woman at work who was working on a Ph.D in, what else, social studies. She captured him, he fell in with her crowd, and I saw him reading popular books, not Danielle Steel, but one level above that. I asked him about it, and he explained what I should have always understood but never had: he read it to have something to talk about with the people he was running with. Well, D’UH, Homer, you’ve stumbled on the secret to happy life!
I saw the 1971 Australian film Wake In Fright last year. There were a few good lines:
http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2009/july/1342411267/kate-jennings/home-truths
GRANT: I’m bored with it. The aggressive hospitality, the arrogance of stupid people who insist you should be as stupid as they are.
and
GRANT: What’s the matter with you people? Sponge on you, burn your house down, murder your wife, rape your child – that’s all right. But not have a drink with you? Don’t have a flaming bloody drink with you? That’s a criminal offence! That’s the end of the bloody world!