...Sorry for the typos in mid- post, I try to be cleaner than that. Too much rushing...
...I am not sure that you should say that Americans are infatuated with mediocrity, when the vast majority are of more or less average intelligence and have no advanced education. They often like good things that are accessible, but many things are difficult to grasp without some development of understanding and sensibility...
...My wife went to the Midwestern Music and Arts camp on the campus of the University of Kansas, when she was in high- school, and had the privilege of performing the Ceremony of Carols in a choral workshop, under the direction of one of the directors of the Roger Wagner Chorale. Luckily for me, they made a record!...
...I have little taste for bombast and melodrama, but you are correct, Puccini is second to Mozart, as far as I can tell...
...At centuries end, even though I love many painters, I still think it is Picasso and Matisse, Matisse and Picasso, for this century...
...On Hemingway: Numb is good...
...I may have been too old to have read Rand. I was already over twenty (except for "Anthem", which I read when I was 18), and my favorite contemporary author was Saul Bellow... |
