20
PARTISAN REVIEW
surveys of buying habits have shown that young peop le are buyin g more
books. T he pace is di ffe rent. Young peopl e have a visual sense an d a per–
ception that is somewhat different. It sounds as th ough you 're concerned,
but also that you believe that they're dumber. I just think it's di ffere nt.
David Sidorsky: I
wanted to agree en tirel y w ith your empiri ca l analysis
and th en raise a ques ti on about an area where I think you may be overly
pessimi stic and another where you are, I think , overl y optimi sti c. A number
of years ago, Oscar H andlin , the librari an o f Harvard , sa id it simply is
beyond him to understand why students who lea rn ed to read in bad high
schools came to Harvard and we re abl e to handl e the curri culum and
become excell ent scholars and w hy sophi sti ca ted students from the better
high schoo ls, who come knowin g all th e quips o f televisio n and the cur–
rent films, aren' t abl e to do nea rl y as well. H e assumed it was tel evision, the
sensa te culture, that was responsible fo r w hat he saw as a declin e in the
humani ties.
On the music po int, when L3l oom w ro te
The
C losill}!
(!f
th e
A lllcriw lI
M illd,
he sa id he go t hundreds of letters fi'om parents and was late r invited
to the Whi te House and N ancy
I~eaga n
to ld him how much she had liked
hi s book. I sa id, " Do you reall y think she liked Ni etzsc hean Marxism?" and
he said, " N o," and I sa id, "Well th en did she read th e book?" and he said,
" Yes," because she talked about w hat the parents' letters were, all complain–
ing how they fe lt rock and ro ll was di sturbing th e ability of their children
to read. Thi s was th e th e message of hi s book, go ing back to Platoni sm and
contro l of music.
The importance of image po liti cs and the inability of th ose who are
po liti cally correct to take the hea t is very human . So I think th e empirical
analysis is compl etel y correct. My po in t is, is it cultural o r does it have to
do w ith the brain ? I hope you're too pessimi sti c, because I have been look–
in g forward to a peri od of grea t cultural declin e wh ere the intell ectual
standards survive, no t in art, music, and humaniti es but in th e sciences and
to some ex tent in th e profess ions , in medi cin e, in law, in busin ess. Yet if you
are ri ght about a different physica l brain abili ty, it would have a deleteri ous
effec t o utside the humaniti es. What I think you may be optimi sti c about is
how ove rw helmin gly o th er cultures have become inundated w ith
Ameri can television, and I just wonder if that isn' t go ing to be th e future.
The inundati on by music and th e television culture and the mov ie culture
o f our time seems unstoppabl e.
Doris Lessing:
Yes, you're probabl y ri ght, but in th e meantime there isn't
enough mo ney around for them to have all thi s. You kn ow rock and ro ll
now seems to me to be quite charmin g compared w ith thi s bang, bang,
