Briefly

-- Mathis Winkler

Best-selling author David Brooks will unravel the mystery of the

Bobos, or bourgeois bohemians, at a lecture at Newport Beach’s Central

Library on Tuesday.

Bobos, says Brooks, have one foot in the bohemian world of creativity

and the other in the bourgeois realm of ambition of worldly success.

Organizers of the event, which forms part of the library foundation’s

Manuscripts Literary Lecture Series, said that Bobos formed an integral

part of Newport Beach’s population.

“Brooks examines a hybrid culture of the nonconforming 1960s and the

overachieving 1980s,” said Tracy Keys, the foundation’s executive

director, adding that the author undertakes “a humorous analysis of the

culture one finds right here in Newport Beach.”

Brooks defines Bobo identity as thinking that spending $15,000 on a

media center is vulgar, but spending $15,000 on a slate shower stall is a

sign that you are at one with the Zen-like rhythms of nature.

The lecture will begin at 7 p.m. in the library’s Friends’ Meeting

Room, 1000 Avocado Ave., Newport Beach. Tickets are $8 for foundation

members and $10 for the general public. Information: (949) 717-3890.