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NEW YORK CITY has long been a magnet for pretentious individuals from the heartland. Reared in stolid communities whose bedrock values discourage intellectual flamboyance, not to mention preciousness, the incipiently affected find that their witty aperçus regarding Couperin's keyboard filigree and Henri de Montherlant's curiously anachronistic Iberian imagery are not well received.
This is particularly true in regions where a rigorously proletarian ethos prevails, where the mere mention of Bossuet, Tacitus, Poulenc, Unamuno or Hildegard von Bingen can result in social ostracism, physical violence, even death. It is hardly surprising, then, that New York, home to some of the most pretentious human beings this side of ancien régime Versailles, can ceaselessly replenish its stock of home-grown show-offs with fresh recruits from the provinces. [...]
The first on my block to own Deryck Cooke's controversial "performance version" of Mahler's unfinished 10th Symphony, I soon became aware that I was brandishing my rapier in an arena where no one else could spell épée. I knew I must eventually make my way to New York, where a veritable army of the precociously snooty would be in a position to give me a run for my money.
- JOE QUEENAN, "The Snob's Comeuppance," new york times december 9, 2005
posted January 09, 2005 in art, music, print. 20042001