The Educated Barbarians

a well-aimed broadside at the yankee yahoo -- a cultural clod with beer taste and a champagne pocketbook

Some Months Ago, a big-circulation European magazine published a cartoon which depicted a camera-draped American tourist and a tourist-guide standing in front of some Greek temple ruins. "First World War or Second?" the caption had the American asking.

Although this may not sound very funny to you or me, the cartoon was widely reprinted all over the Continent. Countless Europeans laughed heartily at what they considered a telling lampoon of the typical American tourist.

While foreigners have long acknowledged and acclaimed American leadership -- and even supremacy -- in science and technology, they have always been highly amused by the cultural illiteracy so often displayed by Americans and particularly by American men.

The curator of a famous French art museum tells me that he can instantly single out most American men in even the largest and most heterogeneous crowds that come to his galleries.

"It's all in their walk," he claims. "The moment the average American male steps through the doors, he assumes a truculently self-conscious half-strut, half-shamble that tries to say: 'I don't really want to be here. I'd much rather be in a bar or watching a baseball game.' "

In my own opinion, the average American's cultural shortcomings can be likened to those of the educated barbarians of ancient Rome. These were barbarians who learned to speak -- and often to read and write -- Latin. They acquired Roman habits of dress and deportment. Many of them handily mastered Roman commercial, engineering and military techniques -- but they remained barbarians nonetheless. They failed to develop any understanding, appreciation or love for the art and culture of the great civilization around them.

The culture-shunning American male has been a caricaturists' cliché for decades, at home as well as abroad -- and with good reason. The traditional majority view in the United States has long seemed to be that culture is for women, longhairs and sissies --not for one-hundred-percent, red-blooded men. Thus, it is hardly surprising that American women are generally far more advanced culturally than American males.

Because I spend much of my time abroad, I have many opportunities to observe my countrymen's reactions to the highly refined cultural climates of foreign countries. Frankly, I'm frequently shocked and discomfited by their bland lack of interest in anything that is even remotely cultural in nature.

A graphic -- and, I fear, all too representative -- example of what I mean can be found in the story of a meeting I had with an old friend in London last summer. My friend, a wealthy U.S. industrialist, stopped off in London en route to the Continent. He telephoned me from his hotel, and we arranged to have lunch together. After we'd eaten, I proposed that we spend a few hours visiting the Wallace Collection. I knew my companion had never seen this fabulous trove of antique furniture and art. As for myself, I was eager to revisit it and once again enjoy seeing the priceless treasures exhibited there. My friend, however, practically choked on the suggestion.

"Good Lord, Paul!" he spluttered indignantly. "I've only two days to spend in London -- and I'm not going to waste an entire afternoon wandering around a musty art gallery. You can go look at antiques and oil paintings. I'm going to look at the girls at the Windmill!"

Then, I recall the dismal tableau enacted in my Paris hotel lobby not long ago when I played host to two American couples visiting Paris for the first time. I stood silently to one side while the husbands and wives argued about what they wanted to do that evening.

The ladies wanted to attend a special nighttime showing of a contemporary sculpture collection that had received high praise from all art critics. The husbands objected vehemently.

"Hell, I've already seen a statue!" one of the men snorted. "Let's go to a nightclub instead!"

The other man agreed enthusiastically. The wives capitulated, and I, being the host, submitted to the inevitable with as much grace as possible under the circumstances.

As a consequence, we all spent the evening in an airless, smoke-filled cabaret exactly like every other airless, smoke-filled cabaret anywhere in the world, listening to a fourth-rate jazz band blare out background noise for a fifth-rate floorshow.

Now, I have nothing against cabarets, jazz bands or floorshows. I enjoy all three -- provided they're good and provided I don't have to live on a steady diet of them. But I certainly can't understand why so many Americans will travel thousands of miles to a world cultural center such as Paris and then spend their time nightclubbing.

Countless experiences similar to these I've related have led me to believe that a comparison between modern American men and the educated barbarians of ancient Rome is not so terribly farfetched after all.

I've found that the majority of American men really believe there is something effeminate -- if not downright subversively un-American -- about showing any interest in literature, drama, art, classical music, opera, ballet or any other type of cultural endeavor. It is virtually their hubris that they are too "manly" and "virile" for such effete things, that they prefer basketball to Bach or Brueghel and poker to Plato or Pirandello.

Unfortunately, this culture-phobia is not an aberration peculiar to the uneducated clods in our society. It is to be found in virulent forms even among highly successful and otherwise intelligent and well-educated individuals. I've heard more than one man with a Phi Beta Kappa key glittering on his watch-chain proclaim loudly that he "wouldn't be caught dead" inside an opera house, concert hall or art gallery. I'm acquainted with many top-level businessmen and executives with Ivy League backgrounds who don't know the difference between a Corot and a chromo -- and couldn't care less.

The "anticulture" bias appears to thrive at most levels of American society. It is reflected in a thousand and one facets of American life. The nauseating, moronic fare dished out to radio, television and motion picture audiences--and presumably relished by them -- is one random example. The comparatively sparse attendance at museums and permanent art exhibitions is another. Only a tiny percentage of the population reads great books or listens to great music. It's doubtful if one in ten Americans is able to differentiate between a Doric and an Ionic column. Save for amateur theatrical groups or touring road companies, the legitimate theater is practically nonexistent outside New York City.

Americans like to boast that the United States is the richest nation on earth. They hardly seem to notice that in proportion to its material wealth and prosperity, the American people themselves are culturally poor, if not poverty-stricken.

The far-reaching and powerful influence of traditional American culture-shunning was, I think, illustrated quite clearly during the recent Presidential campaign. The music editor of the U.S. magazine Saturday Review queried both Presidential candidates for their answers to two questions:

1. Are you in favor of establishing a post of Secretary of Culture with Cabinet rank?

2. To what extent do you believe the Federal Government should assist in the support of museums, symphony orchestras, opera companies and so on?

According to published reports, both candidates rejected the idea of creating a Cabinet post for a Secretary of Culture. Neither seemed to think that Federal aid to domestic cultural activities, institutions and projects should be extended much beyond that which is already being given to the Library of Congress and the National Gallery.

Now, by no means do I intend this as a criticism of either President John F. Kennedy or of Mr. Richard M. Nixon, nor do I in any way wish to imply that they are not both highly cultured gentlemen. I rather imagine that their replies were made on the advice of their political counselors who doubtless warned them to tread carefully and avoid having any fatal "longhair" labels attached to their names.

As far as the first question is concerned, I hardly feel myself qualified to argue its pros and cons. It is not for me to judge whether a Secretary of Culture would be good or bad for the nation.

I am, however, a taxpayer. As such, I cannot help but feel that a few Federal millions spent on cultural activities would be at least as well spent as the countless tens of millions lavished each year on bureaucratic paper-shuffling operations. Certainly all of our citizens would derive much greater benefits from such expenditures than they do from the costly pork-barrel projects to be found in almost every Federal budget.

The United States is the only major nation on earth that does not support its cultural institutions to some degree with public funds. True, the Federal Government has, in recent years, spent large sums to send artists, musicians, entire art exhibits, symphony orchestras and theatrical and dance troupes on globe-girdling junkets to spread American culture abroad for propaganda purposes. These are, of course, valuable projects which do much to raise American prestige in foreign lands.

It is a grotesque paradox that the same Federal Government will not spend a penny to spread culture in America and thus raise the cultural level of our own people!

It strikes me that there is an Alice in Wonderland quality to whatever reasoning may lie behind all this. I am neither a politician nor a government economist. But it seems to me that if the Federal Government is legally obligated to see that the nation's citizens have pure foods, transcontinental highways and daily mail deliveries, then it has at least a moral obligation to see that they have the opportunities and facilities for cultural betterment.

Only one-tenth of one percent--a one-thousandth fraction -- of the annual Federal budget would be sufficient to finance a vast program of support for cultural institutions and activities throughout the country. It is hardly overpricing the value of our cultural present and future to say that they are well worth at least one-thousandth of our Federal tax dollars!

History shows that civilizations live longest through their artistic and cultural achievements. We have forgotten the battles fought and the wars won by ancient civilizations, but we marvel at their architecture, art, painting, poetry and music. The greatness of nations and peoples is in their culture, not in their conquests.

Themistocles is given only a line or two in most history books. Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Phidias, Socrates--all of whom lived in the same Century as Themistocles--are immortals. The edicts and decrees of the Caesars are largely forgotten. The poetry of Horace and Virgil lives on forever. The names of the Medicis, Sforzas and Viscontis gain their greatest luster from the patronage the noble families gave to da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and other unforgettable artists. What are Gneisenau and Scharnhorst in comparison to their countrymen and contemporaries: Beethoven, Schubert, Goethe and Heine? Surely, the moral should be obvious even to the most stubborn of culture-shunners among today's Educated Barbarians.

Nonetheless, entirely too many American men insist that they can see no reason for developing any cultural interests or appreciation of the arts. Some (continued on page 115)Barbarians(continued from page 50) say they "haven't time" for cultural pursuits. Yet, week after week, they will spend dozens of hours at country clubs, loafing here or there, slumped in easy chairs in their homes, staring blankly at the vulgar banalities that flash across the screens of their television sets.

I've found that a disheartening number of businessmen and executives -- young and old -- obstinately maintain that "business and culture don't mix." They cling to the notion that businessmen have neither the temperament nor the patience to understand and appreciate anything "artistic." They seem to fear that participation in cultural activities would somehow "soften" them and make them less able to cope with the harsh realities of the business world. Without doubt, these are the weakest and most fallacious of all arguments.

The world's most successful commercial and industrial leaders have always been noted as patrons of the arts and active supporters of all cultural activities. There are also innumerable proofs that commercial and industrial development, far from being incompatible with cultural progress, actually gives culture its strongest forward impetus. It can be shown that the arts have always flourished most vigorously in prosperous, highly commercialized and industrialized nations.

One excellent example of this is provided by the Republic of Venice, which dominated the commerce of Europe and Asia for nearly eight centuries. The Venetian traders were as shrewd and as materialistic as any the world has ever known. The Venetians were also crack industrialists, mastering production-line techniques more than six hundred years before the first assembly line made its appearance in the United States. The gigantic arsenal at Venice was geared to turn out at least one fully-equipped, seagoing ship a day on an assembly line that began with the laying of the vessel's keel and finished with the arming and provisioning of the ship.

The Venetians were hard-headed, profit-conscious merchants and manufacturers. All things considered, they faced far more risks and problems in their day-to-day operations than any modern businessman. Nevertheless, these were the men who were responsible for the building of the Doges' Palace, the Golden Basilica of St. Mark, the great palazzi along the Grand Canal and uncounted other magnificent structures which they filled with works of incomparable beauty.

It was in and for "commercial" Venice that Tintoretto, Titian, Veronese and many other masters produced their greatest works. The canal-laced city of tough-skinned merchants and manufacturers became an artistic wonder of the world -- and so it remains even to this day. The beauty and esthetic grandeur of Venice have endured -- monuments not only to the artists who created the beauty, but also to the businessmen at whose behest it was created.

In modern times, cultural progress has certainly kept pace with industrial and commercial expansion in such nations as England, France, Italy, Germany and Sweden -- to name only a few. Neither businessmen nor the populace as a whole in any of these countries is taking any less interest in cultural activities today than they did years, decades or generations ago. Quite to the contrary. It is evident that, although their lives have grown more complex and their pace of living has been greatly accelerated, they are still packing the art galleries, museums, concert halls, theaters and opera houses.

These people have learned a lesson it would be well for many Americans to study. They have learned that culture bestows many rewards and benefits -- among them a better, more satisfactory life, great inner satisfaction and mental and emotional refreshment and inspiration.

Americans traveling abroad are often startled to hear rubbish collectors or street sweepers singing operatic arias or humming the themes of symphonies or concertos as they go about their work. If they happen to know the language of the country they are visiting, American tourists are even more surprised when -- as frequently happens --they hear restaurant waiters or hotel employees arguing heatedly among themselves over the relative merits of various Impressionist painters or classical dramatists.

Many Americans who go overseas on business are nonplused to find their foreign counterparts interspersing their business conversations with references -- and quotations -- from great authors, poets, playwrights and philosophers about whom the Americans have only the haziest, skimpiest knowledge.

Saddest of all are some American businessmen I've encountered in Europe who went abroad to buy or invest and expected European manufacturers to entertain them in the best accepted Madison Avenue tradition-- with wild nights on the town. I've listened with a straight face and, I hope, with an adequately sympathetic expression to the woeful recitals of several of these men who wailed that instead of the anticipated champagne-soaked orgies, they found themselves being taken to the opera or the ballet.

What I'm driving at is that the average man in most civilized foreign countries -- be he laborer or industrial magnate -- takes a keen interest in and has a deep appreciation of all forms of cultural and artistic expression.

There are, I suppose, several principal reasons for the indifference -- if not open hostility-- of the majority of American men toward all things that come under artistic or cultural headings. Some of the roots can be found in our Puritan heritage. Early American Puritans, hewing to their stern, super-Calvinist doctrines, equated art with depravity, branded most music as carnal and licentious, shunned literature other than religious tracts or theological discourses and condemned virtually all cultural pursuits as being frivolous and sinful. In the Puritan view, that which was not starkly simple and coldly functional was, propter hoc, debauched and degenerate.

Despite the fact that the Puritans were only a minority to begin with and were entirely engulfed by gargantuan infusions of non-Puritan stock into the American melting pot, the influence of the Puritan heritage on American thought and behavior can be noted even to this day.

Then, there is the Colonial and Revolutionary tradition which so many alleged authorities have quite incorrectly defined as having demanded a complete break with all that was European, including the "decadent" cultures of England and the Continent.

The founding fathers desired no such thing. They sought political independence from England and wished to eliminate monarchy and titled aristocracy from the American scheme. But most leading figures of the American Revolution hoped to preserve the cultural traditions of the Old World and to transplant the highly developed art and culture of England and Europe to the New World.

Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams -- to mention only three -- were all men of culture. Anyone who has ever visited Thomas Jefferson's home in Monticello must have been impressed by the flawless taste reflected in the architecture and furnishings of the house built by this man who read the classics in Greek and Latin.

But then, one need look no further than the architecture of the nation's capital to find refutation of the theory that the founders of the United States desired to discard foreign artistic and cultural influences. The Capitol Building and the White House, both designed soon after the Revolutionary War ended, are excellent examples. The Capitol Building is strongly reminiscent of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. There is a startling resemblance between the main façade of the White House and that of the Duke of Leinster's home in Dublin, on which architect James Hoban based his designs for the Executive Mansion.

Despite the mass of incontrovertible proof to the contrary, there are still ultrapatriots and professional chauvinists who believe that the Colonial tradition entailed a repudiation of classical -- and particularly European or foreign -- art and culture. From this fallacious concept it is only a short step to the theory that all cultural activities are un-American and unsuited for red-blooded Americans.

As if these influences -- the Puritan and what might be termed the pseudo-Colonial traditions -- were not enough, the average American man's attitude toward culture has been further warped by the mythical mystique of the American frontier heritage.

The rough-and-ready, generally unlettered and often uncouth, frontiersman long ago became the figure after which generations of American men would subconsciously pattern themselves. Believing that they are emulating praiseworthy qualities of their pioneer forebears, many U.S. males sneer at any art above the September Morn level and jeer at any music that cannot be played on a honky-tonk piano or twanged and scraped out by a self-taught banjo player and an amateur fiddler.

The figure of the two-fisted, fast-drawing and culture-hating frontiersman may be picturesque, but it is a misleading one. There were many cultured men -- and men who thirsted for culture -- as well as barroom brawlers and gunslingers on the American frontier.

It is, perhaps, significant to note the examples provided by two rough, tough cities that played important roles in America's Westward expansion -- San Francisco and Denver.

San Francisco's Barbary Coast and Denver's Holladay Street were probably the wickedest and wildest enclaves in all the wild, wild West. Even so, there were few Eastern metropolises that gave such quick and unstinting support to cultural projects as did San Francisco and Denver, even in their raucous infancy.

San Franciscans always showed an appreciation for music and art -- even in the days when the city was a gold-rush-era Helldorado. There are very few metropolises in the United States today with higher general levels of taste and culture than San Francisco -- and the city's cultural traditions go back well over a century.

Denver had its Occidental Hall and the Tabor Grand Opera House -- the latter built by H. A. W. Tabor, as crude a character as can be found in American history. The Tabor Grand Opera House was a showplace of the West. Operas, concerts and lectures were given there -- and Denverites packed the auditorium, listened attentively and, if contemporary accounts are to be believed, appreciatively.

I believe I am qualified to comment personally on the culture-shunning myth of the American frontier. My own forebears came to the United States in the Eighteenth Century. They were pioneers, mainly farmers, who came to America to build their futures in the wilderness. It was for one of them, James Getty, that Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was named.

Judging by the memorabilia these people left behind, they and large numbers of their contemporaries hungered for culture and knowledge in all forms. They read avidly, passing books -- particularly the classics -- from hand to hand. They dreamed of the day when they could have good oil paintings on the walls of the good homes they hoped to build. They tried to teach their children to appreciate and love fine literature, art and music.

My own father was born in 1855 on an Ohio farm -- and a very poor and unproductive farm at that. His widowed mother was impoverished and life was anything but simple and easy. Yet, the thirst for intellectual and cultural betterment was great. My father worked his way through school and college, and one of his greatest sources of pride was his membership in his university's literary society.

I, myself, had a heaping helping of life on America's last frontier when, in 1904, my father, mother and I went to what was then the Oklahoma Territory. The great Oklahoma Oil Rush had just begun. Clapboard and raw-pine settlements mushroomed overnight around newly discovered oil fields and newly established drilling sites. Most grown men habitually carried six-guns strapped to their waists; shooting affrays were everyday commonplaces.

The situation had not changed much by 1909, when I first went to work as a roustabout on one of the oil wells my father was drilling in the Oklahoma fields. Nor was there a very great deal of difference in 1914, when I struck out on my own as a wildcatting oil prospector.

The oil-field workers and wildcatters were certainly hard, tough and virile, but I can remember many of the toughest among them dressing up in their Sunday best and going to Oklahoma City or Tulsa to hear a touring opera company or a concert artist perform.

When they struck it rich, a great many oil men -- I might even say most -- bought or built homes and purchased paintings, sculptures and antique furniture and rugs for them. They also went East, to New York, to see the plays and hear the operas and concerts.

True, their tastes were seldom refined or matured -- at least not at first. But the fact remains that these rugged, hardbitten men did thirst for artistic beauty, and they did take an active interest in and show appreciation for things cultural. By no means were they the culture-phobes that so many modern Americans think all frontiersmen and old-timers were, and whose imagined example they seek to emulate in order to prove themselves rugged, two-fisted, all-male men.

There are other factors that help produce such a high proportion of educated barbarians among American men -- but, regardless of the causes, the results are deplorable.

The saddest part of the whole situation is that the United States does possess outstanding cultural institutions and facilities. American symphony orchestras and opera companies are among the finest in the world. American museums and art galleries -- public and private -- have amassed some of the world's greatest collections of paintings, sculptures, tapestries, antique furniture -- of art in all its forms from all historical periods.

Great music is available on phonograph records and recording tapes. Fine works by contemporary painters and sculptors and fine reproductions of the works of the masters are well within the reach of most Americans' pocketbooks. The great classics of literature are available in editions costing only a few cents per volume. Courses in art and music appreciation, literature, poetry and drama are offered, not only in the public schools and colleges, but also in adult education programs.

Tragically, only a comparatively tiny fraction of the population -- and particularly of the male population -- takes advantage of the myriad facilities and opportunities that are offered throughout the country.

Symphony orchestras and opera companies often end their seasons with staggering deficits. Few, indeed, are the art museums and galleries that can report regular heavy attendance. Countless record albums featuring the caterwaulings of some bosomy chanteuse or tone-deaf crooner are sold for every album of serious music that is purchased. Even greater numbers of lurid, ill-written novels are snapped up for every volume of serious literature that is bought. Save for a few sections of the country, cultural classes and courses seldom if ever have capacity enrollments. Teachers and professors who conduct such classes have told me that a course that should have thirty or forty students enrolled in it will have only six or eight.

Americans, and especially American men, must realize that an understanding and appreciation of literature, drama, art, music -- in short, of culture -- will give them a broader, better foundation in life, and will enable them to enjoy life more, and more fully. It will provide them with better balance and perspective, with interests that are pleasing to the senses and inwardly satisfying and gratifying.

Far from emasculating or effeminizing a man, a cultural interest serves to make him more completely -- and a more complete -- male as well as a more complete human being. It stimulates and vitalizes him as an individual -- and sharpens his tastes, sensibilities and sensitivity for and to all things in life.

The cultured man is almost invariably a self-assured, urbane and completely confident male. He recognizes, appreciates and enjoys the subtler shadings and nuances to be found in the intellectual, emotional and even physical spheres of human existence -- and in the relationships between human beings. Be it in a board room or a bedroom, he is much better equipped to play his masculine role than is the generally heavy-handed and maladroit educated barbarian.

It isn't necessary to force-feed oneself with culture nor to forsake other interests in order to experience the benefits and pleasures offered by cultural pursuits. One's preferences, tastes and knowledge should be developed slowly, gradually -- and enjoyably.

Culture is like a fine wine that one drinks in the company of a beautiful woman. It should be sipped and savored -- never gulped.