PARTISAN REVIEW
205
New York is not somehow for all of us almost a part of Europe as
was mentioned. And a part of Europe that is used as a force almost
against the cultural vitality or even lack of vitality of the rest of the
nation which is itself divided into different regions and different
kinds of groupings.
KRAMER :
Well, I'm not sure I can address myself
to
everything you said
or every part of the question you raised, but I would like to address
myself
to
some part of it which might also touch on something as
George states it. I don ' t think that New York is, certainly as far as the
arts are concerned, just to limit it to that for the moment, I don't
think New York has this despised status that has been suggested this
evening. I travel around the country a great deal. It's true most of the
people I see are either attached to museums or universities. But I find
when I go to Minneapolis or Richmond, or Kansas City or where–
ever that there's a tremendous... still a tremendous admiration for
what is going on in the arts, a tremendous attachment to it,
tremendous envy, tremendous curiousity; everyone feels that the
cutting edge of artistic and intellectual ideas is in New York, that
ew York is where you are going to be judged if you're doing
anything and if you're not judged in New York then you're not
going to be known as doing anything. New York is still the
cosmopolitan cultural center of this country and it doesn ' t mean that
there isn't a great deal else going on. There are museums outside of
New York that have magnificent exhibitions, there are poets writing
very good poetry and so on. Everyone, the directors of those
museums, those poets, all know that ultimately they 're going to be
weighed in a scale that exists in New York. And I really don't think
that this country is regional in the sense you're suggesting. I think
that writers, no matter how regional their materials may be, when it
comes to having their art judged, the art which is their writing or
painting or whatever, they know that it's going to be judged in the
cosmopolitan center and that remains New York.
BERMAN:
A couple of remarks, a couple of very brief remarks, and then
one that will take a little longer. The first one is that it's as
meaningful to say that the new Left brought us the Nixon adminis–
tration as it is to say that liberalism brought us the war in Vietnam.
OK, the second thing is that those who are worried that New York
intellectuals are not alienated enough, or too involved in the system,
let me assure you that my friends are getting fired every day, my
graduate students, not to mention undergraduates have no prospect
of any kind of intellectual jobs at all, so there'll be a whole.. .there's a
whole new wave of alienated intellectuals coming soon, and if
