THERE’S something quite dreary about those who have to be different for the sake of being different. You know the type—often found at parties standing smugly in a corner wearing corduroys, talking about how Radiohead’s music is ‘rather derivative’, the YBAs (Young British Artists) weren’t actually all that interesting and how, actually, no, they didn’t go skiing in France this year, or last year, as they ‘just love the Dolomites’. These people are often to be avoided.
But you hear it more and more, don’t you? ‘The Dolomites’. What are they? Who are they for? The name: floating in the background static of middle-class discourse,