Andrew Carlan replies to Bernard Gregoire:

>There are some consenses not necessarily absolutes gotten from logic
>but cross-cultural reactions over many generations.  For example, those
>who know food generally agree that French and Chinese cuisines are the most
>artistic and highly developed.

I happen to know food a little bit.  I would call French and Chinese
cuisines highly developed and inventive, but not more so than many others.
I live, after all, in New Orleans, which probably has more great restaurants
than any American city other than New York.  I know, you live in New York.

>That doesn't mean Italian food isn't great or even that a great Italian
>cook will not convince you while you are eating their meal that it rivals
>any French and Chinese meal you can remember.

Talk to an Italian, who will tell you that Italians taught the French
how to cook when Catherine de Medici brought her cooks with her to France.
There are as many variations and levels of Italian cooking as there are
for French.  Also, this is really a matter of what restaurants you've been
in.  I've been in expensive ones and I've been in good ones (the two aren't
always the same).  We both would rather eat in a good oyster bar than in a
bad French restaurant.  One of the greatest restaurants in this country,
Mosca's in Waggaman, Louisiana, is Creole-Italian.  We look at, ultimately,
individual achievement, not cultural ones.

>One of the reasons classical music is dwindling is that there are none left
>fearless enough to make its claim from at least Palestrina to the early
>part of this century European music was the most unrivalled explosion of
>music in human history.

No, that's not the reason.  First, the classical music audience is probably
not dwindling.  The market may become less viable, but that's another
question.  As to "most unrivalled," that's just journalism, as far as I'm
concerned.  What about the explosion of music at least a century before
Palestrina with the Flemish School? I would contend a similar explosion of
music since the end of the nineteenth century.  How does music explode?
What's the unit of measure? How do we compare?

I suppose, having been raised in the Midwest with the values of reticence
and modesty, that football cheering for high western culture (yay!  we're
number one!) seems more than a little adolescent to me, especially since
most of us have nothing to do with creating it and have so little knowledge
of other traditions when we make the claim.

Steve Schwartz