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A sketch of our cultural life would show things moving in and out so fast, it is impossible to tell who is worth what. Our late 20th century institutions reach back a hundred years and cherish Twain, Mahler and Van Gogh. Will the names Sondheim, Bellow and de Kooning mean anything to you? Should they? In painting, music and literature there are no dominant movements, no isms to force a sense of organized effort. Art imitating life is individually wrought, and individually judged, such as it is ever judged. So cozy is our artistic- academic axis (for they are one and the same), that all one needs to be hailed as important is several well-placed friends.
Never have more individuals been more prominently displayed; never have they been less productive. Last year high school students were polled to select America's top heroes. They came up with Eddie Murphy, Clint Eastwood, Madonna (a person), Prince (another person), Sylvester Stallone and Debbie Allen. Those names mean anything to you? It makes one wonder who will be remembered and for what. It makes one wonder who will not be remembered but ought to be. Cary Grant died a few weeks back. Does that name mean something to you?
Journalism, which ought to be the most anonymous of cultural activities, being the least demanding, has become a Chaucerian House of Fame for reporters who mistake themselves for the news. Politicians make reputations by their appearances on television, as do doctors, opera singers, writers, dancers and others who seem to do nothing but appear on television. If I told you that a wildly popular television show is called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, on which a peppy middle-aged man with an alarmed cockney accent flatters people who have done nothing in the act of doing nothing on vacation, you would think I am kidding. Of course I'm kidding.
Films are written with a young, or childish, audience in mind. A man named Spielberg is known for producing movies about creatures from the future. For your sakes, we hope he's off the mark. Do you watch anything like films and go out to concerts and the theater, or are you able to conjure arts and entertainments in your heads? Can you read without books? With more people reading and writing on computers these days, there is some concern that the objects we call books will shortly disappear. There is more concern that the books we cherish from the past will be lost in the rush of things, that you will not know Dante, Milton, Proust.
How much of our popular music will swim upstream the next hundred years is up to you, who may find the Bee Gees indispensable and the Who old hat. If you do not understand that last sentence, not to worry. Not to worry: it is a phrase of the times, which serves as a reminder that our language may be incomprehensible to you, as it often is to us. Eighteen years ago, people were talking of policemen as pigs. More accommodating these days, we say "You got it" when we agree to something, or "No problem." The latter usually means that the problem is insurmountable.