New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl put a few noses out of joint in a recent visit to Chicago. Addressing a gathering in the Windy City's Museum of Contemporary Art, Schjeldahl laid out a theory of "transmitter" and "receptor" cities, and placed Chicago firmly in the later category.
Chicago, he declared, is "a place that has always sent talented artists and creative types out - a net exporter of talent." New York, Los Angeles, and London, per Schjeldahl, are transmitter cities, while cities whose talents migrate elsewhere - Chicago, Boston, and the like - end up being receptors.
(Schjeldahl was apparently unaware of the grand tradition of New Yorker critics trashing Chicago, e.g. A. J. Liebling's vituperative, three-part put-down of the "Second City" in 1952, which is still in print.)
I will let Chicago fight its own battles. Schjeldahl agreed with me that, architecturally, it may well be America's First City. "It's much better than New York, you can actually put up good buildings there," he said. As for "creative types" emigrating from Chicago, well, yes and no. Who has done more for American letters in the past 20 years, Oprah Winfrey or Ann Godoff, a superfamous New York editor you've never heard of? I'm with Oprah.
And, with the possible exception of the Roman arch and the invention of hi-def TV, Chicago gave mankind the greatest gift of all: the atom bomb.
It is beyond ironical that a Boston writer should tee off on the theme of transmitting versus receiving cities. If there is one place where the terms of trade in almost every field have radically shifted, it's here. Two hundred years ago, Boston dominated American commercial and political life. Now, like the mummified remains of the Egyptian pharaohs, the artifacts of our bygone triumphs clutter up museums, like the Peabody Essex, or adorn musty, unread memoirs, like "The Education of Henry Adams." Who he?
As recently as a hundred years ago - only a Bostonian could write that sentence - Boston lorded over American culture. I have in front of me a book published in 1966, Martin Green's "The Problem of Boston," which argues that Boston was too influential, and had a negative, lasting impact on American letters. As if.
So who is transmitting, and who is just fiddling with the dial? Schjeldahl is right about the dominance of New York and Los Angeles, and not just in the faux, creepy, money-saturated world of "art." Whatever the "media" is - a nightmarish hurricane of television, movies, fashion, gossip, information about faraway torture chambers and even the language that we speak, i.e. Borat's "not so much" - it is emanating from the cultural capitals of the two coasts.
Commerce and power? I'd locate commerce in lots of different places: New York, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Dubai; wherever The Economist can reliably sell out on the newsstand. Almost everywhere but here. Power? I would make the case for my hometown, the oft-maligned and unlivable Washington, D.C. There's a reason that latter-day Elmer Gantrys like Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee want to move there. You can get a lot done, despite what they say in the newspapers.
So what about us? Our collective losses have launched a thousand newspaper columns. The Bank of Boston, which once ruled Hollywood and toppled Central American governments with the flick of a finger, no longer exists. The Northeast mob, our great department stores, wonderful publishing houses - they have all disappeared or relocated, as Boston has become Branch Office City. Even the US Open squash tournament slinked out of town in the dead of night! Can you imagine!
What's left? We still have some excellent universities, one of the world's best symphonies, and good medical care for foreign potentates suffering from inconvenient blockages. On a less wholesome note, we have become the nation's capital for cloying, sports-fan homer-dom, a symptom of our collective insecurity.
We might do better to celebrate our occasional civic triumphs with a becoming modesty, as we are becoming a place that has more and more to be modest about.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.
