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PARTISAN REVIEW
them automatic deference. And free of apprenticeship to European mas–
ters, American arts and letters flourished.
In the decades since, Europe has mattered less and less in forming
American tastes. Other factors have mattered more and more, including
the robust advance, indeed the romance, of science and technology, as
well as the rise of globalization . But it is well to recall that neither sci–
ence nor technology nor globalization are purely local products. Of
course, America has exported its culture, but it has also continued to
import. Our culture is, after all, one that has long benefited from its
freedom to appropriate the ideas of other cultures. And the fluidity of
American culture, its ability to absorb ideas and to harness them for
inspiration, innovation, warning, has been one of the keys to this coun–
try's great prosperity and to the influence it has today. The Brahmins of
Louisburg Square were, as you all know, an adamantly inbred crew.
One thinks of the Beacon Hill matron who once famously located Cali–
fornia as lying someplace west of Dedham. But our Brahmins these days
are just as likely to have family roots in the soil of Bangalore, Beijing,
Buenos Aires, Bangkok, as in Exeter, Ipswich, or Coventry. Even in
Cambridge, across the river, Au Bon Pain must share Massachusetts
Avenue not only with Mr. Bartley's Famous Burgers, but also with the
Hong Kong Restaurant and Lounge. Now, not surprisingly, American
prosperity has stirred discontent and earned some enmity. "Our Coun–
try, Our Culture" will inevitably address this anti-Americanism in both
its domestic and international forms . These days it is sometimes difficult
to hear over the roar of the F-15s, but if you listen hard enough, you
can still discern the whine of European intellectuals complaining that
Western civilization is being throttled by the white-gloved sausage fin–
gers of Mickey Mouse.
Now, I trust that more nuanced accounts will be heard in the next
few days, because participants in
Partisan Review
conferences are, like
the journal itself, imaginative and independent. Since the 1930S,
Parti–
san Review
has been providing a forum for some of the very best writ–
ing and some of the most acute cultural commentary to be found
anywhere. Boston University has been part of
Partisan Review's
history
since the 1970S when, under the editorship of one of its founders,
William Phillips, and his associate, Edith Kurzweil, the journal found a
second home here along Bay State Road. I think its dual citizenship
among the cosmopolitan salons and the raucous markets of Manhattan
and the patrician townhouses and biotech rookeries here in Boston gives
the journal a unique view of our arts and achievements at their most
American and worldly. Today and tomorrow we are going to be privi-
