I’m not sure what he means about Chekov, I know that he was part of the syllabus for students as recently as the mid 90s, many of my friends studied him as part of their theatre studies A-level and I read him because they introduced me to him although I wasn’t doing the course. Maybe medical students are just concentrating on science and medicine but it would be wrong to extrapolate their experiences to the whole body of society.
I do think that there is a more narrow specialisation of knowledge now, i’ve met many people who while being very experienced in their particular field, know very little of anything else. I think that this is at least in part driven by the increasing specialisation demanded by a modern economy, Adam Smith’s pinhead makers gone to the extreme.
He is quite right about the ridiculous ‘celebrity’ culture too but overall he is too pessimistic, I see much in this same society he is condemning that is positive along with the undoubted negatives. As he very fairly points out, this type of lamenting of a utopian bygone era seems to be a speciality of men of his age throughout the years.
