America’s ‘Only Real Art’

I agree 100% with Fleming’s article. It is a point of view long past due.

Art snobs have snubbed Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” as grand opera for years. In 1974 my wife and I visited Budapest and found that it was currently playing at that famed opera house. It is an authentic American opera, if there ever was one. For my money, “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” is an opera as well.

As for poetry, give me the words of Jackson Browne’s “For a Dancer,” or even, heaven forbid, the Monkees’ “Shades of Gray.”

I recently shocked friends by observing that Nashville is the “Vienna” of the United States. The music associated with Nashville attracts all generations, as does the so-called “schmaltzy” music of Vienna and Grinzing.

Why, indeed, should I support with tax dollars the dissonance of Schonberg and Bartok when I wouldn’t cross the street to hear them?

I see nothing wrong with the time-honored American principle of letting art pass the test of the marketplace.

M.K. NOREN

Camarillo