Self-consciousness is the curse of a high culture with shallow roots. That’s why American popular art at its not-infrequent best is so much better than, say, your average first novel by a promising young American writer (especially one who went to graduate school). Yes, the market often squashes art down to its lowest common denominator, and you end up with gangsta rap or professional football. But every once in a while, it also creates a working environment whose narrow confines mysteriously free the artist from what W. H. Auden called “the fetters of Self,” and then you end up with Fred Astaire—or Chuck Jones.
Mr. Teachout, arts columnist of the New York Daily News and associate editor of The New Dance Review, is the editor of A Second Mencken Chrestomathy, to be published by Knopf in January.
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