Call me ‘hoity-toity’; I fully embrace it

THANK YOU for Mark Swed’s piece, “Elitism: It’s an Equal Opportunity Affliction” [July 27]. I feel like I should print this up and carry it around with me. Then when people call me “hoity-toity” for showing up at my office peon job with a Paris Review in my hands (my purse was already overflowing with books), I can just hand them the article.

Yesterday I threw on the only Schoenberg album I own. I can’t even tell you which one. I hadn’t listened to it in a while, and it made me smile. Something about it enhances the silence of silence. Sounds like how Kandinsky looks to my eyes. And then I laughed, because it was yet another experience I should probably keep to myself.

Nicole M. Berg

Chicago