Arts and Manners

Lament on A Drought

One of the most disturbing aspects of our cultural debacle is the fact that itisbyno means generally conceded. As if this were a period like any other, just one more beat in the normal rhythm of time, the optimists among us see nothing but silver linings on the pitch-dark horizon, and scold the truthful critic who tells of the night. Yet, to no one’s surprise, the case of the optimists shrinks down to statistics: three million high school kids in America are playing an instrument; there are seven times more dramatic groups active in Suburbia than only fifteen years ago; the nation spent last year, on long-playing records, almost one-eleventh of what it lost at the race tracks; and so on. Now, how do these lovely figures make us look—us, those kill-joys in a gay mass civilization, those damnable bards of gloom?

WS

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William S. Schlamm

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Lament on A Drought

One of the most disturbing aspects of our cultural debacle is the fact that itisbyno means generally conceded. As if this were a period like any other, just one more beat in the normal rhythm of time, the optimists among us see nothing but silver linings on the pitch-dark horizon, and scold the truthful critic who tells of the night. Yet, to no one’s surprise, the case of the optimists shrinks down to statistics: three million high school kids in America are playing an instrument; there are seven times more dramatic groups active in Suburbia than only fifteen years ago; the nation spent last year, on long-playing records, almost one-eleventh of what it lost at the race tracks; and so on. Now, how do these lovely figures make us look—us, those kill-joys in a gay mass civilization, those damnable bards of gloom?