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In the professions, too, most of the U.S. can no longer be remotely considered provincial. The most celebrated heart surgeon in the country works in Texas, the best-known endocrinologist in Minneapolis. Dr. Jonas Salk came from New York City and now works in San Diego, and the nation's most famous psychiatric center is in Topeka. Of the nine members of the Supreme Court, at the pinnacle of the profession of law, only one could be considered a product of the Eastern Establishment.
Even in fashions and fads, the rest of the country no longer waits on the East's lead. One reason: the real trend leaders in today's U.S. are the youth, who tend to break down old geographical barriers in spreading their enthusiasms. The discotheque, the no-bra bra and surfing went from West to East, and one of the biggest sounds in rock 'n' roll is Motown, out of Detroit. There were bikinis on Los Angeles beaches long before they appeared at Southampton, and slacks were common on La Cienega Boulevard years before they became the young matron's routine Saturday-morning garb on Manhattan's Upper East Side.
Still, how well a city is doing in many fields is often measured against New York, which is really the commercial and cultural marketplace of the U.S. For better or worse, any artist anywhere has to meet the criteria of New York before he can claim real stature. Touring shows draw small audiences in the hinterlands without the benison of Broadway approval, regional writers do not achieve status until they have run the gamut of Manhattan's cold-eyed critics. In men's suits or women's dresses, in movies, plays, antiques, art or restaurants, the New Yorker knows that he is making a judicious selection among the best that is available.
After all, though, the vast majority of these tastemakers are themselves from other parts of the U.S. and came to New York with the express or subconscious intention of telling the stay-at-homes what provincials they are. Today the stay-at-homes are talking back, and with ever increasing self-confidence. They have seen New York—and probably Paris and London as well. Money, travel and material possessions do not, of course, automatically make them cosmopolitan—as all too many U.S. tourists in Europe have proved—but it at least gives them a base on which to build a greater awareness.
Contributing to the declining awe of New York is the inexorable rise of California, and particularly Los Angeles. California is currently the center of the think tanks and aerospace, and its educational system is probably the most enlightened in the U.S. If its art galleries, museums and theaters cannot yet challenge Manhattan's in resources or variety, every Californian is confident that it is only a question of time. California, its citizens feel, is where the action is. The result is a sense of revision in the heartland's image of itself. Where it once envisioned a constantly downward slope from the pinnacle represented by the East Coast and New York, it now sees an opposing standard on the other coast to which it can repair or, anyway, look.
The National Stream