The Trash Collector (Better Living Through Bad Taste)

Trash: You know it when you see it—the formulaic made-for-TV movie, the New Age background music at the health spa, the garbage disdained by people of good taste. But philosopher Matthew Strohl argues that “good taste” is a trap. It gives us a false sense of certainty while narrowing our horizons and muting the expressive power of our most idiosyncratic urges. Strohl suggests that the way to find our greatest cultural joys is not to obediently do the approved thing, but to devote ourselves to exploring our weirdest curiosities.

Strohl is serious about bad taste. He’s dedicated thousands of hours to deep dives into such unlikely treasure troves as spicy werewolf novels, the bargain-bin cinema of Eric Roberts, Minnesota hotdish, and the aesthetics of flashlights. Strohl gleefully unpacks these trashy adventures to reveal the hidden dynamics of our aesthetic lives. Deftly gesturing to thinkers like Pierre Bourdieu, Nick Riggle, and Alexander Nehamas, he critiques the arbitrary and fickle nature of taste and how it is rooted in social aspiration and cultural conditioning. He urges us to question our reflexive dismissal of so many of the possibilities that are open to us and invites us to instead cultivate the “cardinal virtues of trash”: humility, curiosity, openness, adventurousness, creativity, sincerity, fellowship, and authenticity.

A delightful and sly work of accessible, popular philosophy, The Trash Collector makes the radical argument that by journeying into the places we’ve assumed are beneath us, we just might find a path to self-actualization.