WHAT MAKES so-called developed or metropolitan societies like Western Europe and the USA enjoy overall social and political stability today is not simply economic development, since such development is largely the secondhand result of heeding a non-dogmatic polemical collection of ideas and ideals dating back centuries, and acting upon such ideals in a practical, constructive and progressive manner rather than stagnantly arguing, bickering, or fighting over them.

Eddie Money, hip New York pop singer of the hit song ‘Baby hold on to me’.

For example, what can be more morally tolerant, non-stereotypical, and educationally progressive than knowledge and influence from the critically acknowledged best of European and American creative literature and films from the 1930s to the present? An educated ‘class’ in both Western Europe and the USA emerged, guiding their society with such cultural knowledge.

Even ideas gratifying simplicity, and contrary to an obsession with wealth, competition, and the exploitation of Man by Man, continue to find a multitude of American and European adherents who prize polemical books like the great American classic, ‘WALDEN’ by Henry David Thoreau.

In such societies, the tumultuous, violent and disruptive events of the American and French Revolutions over two hundred years ago have been correctly succeeded by the new radical and flexible process which is higher education combined with cultural and social refinement, stemming from advanced literacy and the pursuit of technical skills.

Every successful social transformation in today’s world utilizes the accumulated universal knowledge that has been passed down to all who are democratically free, via literature and books above all, rather than the puerile repetition of Man’s crude confrontational,  bigoted and ignorant behaviour and pronouncements , which, 200 years ago, did not have the same mass communicated advantages of educated influence which exist today.

National progress today results from whole populations making use of such broad educated influences which can lead to the formation of small companies by graduates who do not rely simply on employment from others, but create their own businesses with help from others.

Countries also that depend only on tourism and exported raw materials for income and employment, without also pursuing intellectual and cultural development, attract mediocre foreign interest, and often remain at a crude basic material level of development.

When New York City made itself the leading publishing centre of America, and perhaps the world,  it stimulated the growth of its economy via local and international book publishing and sales, utilizing the works of writers who portrayed or described its very streets, neighbour-hoods,  professions, diverse peoples etc. In short, the very fabric of New York and America.

This attracted international interest to itself via such intelligent creations, which further sustained its macro-economic growth.  If you have been a reader of books in the English language who pays attention to the names of their publishers, one of the pleasures of walking in New York City is to discover the names of such publishers in gold plates on glass doors, or on the walls of buildings. Enduring names like Simon & Schuster, Time-Warner, McGraw Hill, E.P. Dutton, Farrar Strauss & Giroux, Alfred Knopf, St Martin’s Press, New Directions Inc, etc.

Franz Kline next to one of his New York City influenced paintings.

But how did such publishing houses start in the first place? New York City built its economic reputation as a production and distribution centre for creative products of a cultural and social nature: Literature, functional everyday fashion (for example, opposite the Museum of Modern Art on Fifth Ave, there is an amazing fashion store called ‘Anthropolgie’, which specializes in fabulously  well-cut fashions  reflecting tropical rustic wear in khaki, white cotton,  polished  leather, woven strands, etc; yet in emerging fashion design in Guyana, no one has produced such a commonsense tropical fashion style), visual arts, design, film, cuisine, banking, educational institutions, music recording studios, etc.

These qualities make it a solid business and tourist destination. Imagine an educated individual and his wife, or a few friends, who happen to possess a generous amount of money from inheritance, business creations, or from professional success. Together they decide to form a publishing house, so they pool their money, investigate the cost of printing books in a professional attractive manner, by a printer who does not even have to operate out of New York City.

They rent an office, and at first hire a small team of professionals, University graduates or professors who hold degrees in literature, and with experience in reading a wide range of writing styles, topics, etc. That is the basis of a publishing house.

Through advertisements in the media, they acquire manuscripts from writers. Perhaps the editors may look for works beyond the immediate New York or American environment; that means they will now have access to English-speaking nations around the globe. What about non-Anglo readers? There are millions of such readers in France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Latin America, and beyond. The New York publishers now hire translators for the languages of such countries, publishing rights are sold, and books are republished by national publishers in these countries in their own language.

The opposite also occurs: New York publishers purchase rights to foreign books which are translated into English, and a whole new market to millions of readers open up for writers and publishers.

No truly educated people anywhere read only their local literature. In the 1960s and 70s, Latin American (and Caribbean) novelists became a worldwide hit via New York publishers of their translated novels in hard and soft-cover editions.

A huge new readership for literature from South America emerged. This process has lessons for developing nations, and proves that prolific literature advertising the society it comes from will only be created when writers already know they have publishers at hand to expose it in a manner that attracts readers.

New York City’s tested logic and experience in encouraging, collecting, supporting, financing and distributing creative products which enhance the international reputation of the city while providing jobs and input, protects it from the threat of new cultish fabricated thought-systems which abbreviate and abridge the deeper wisdom of great thinkers and artists, Western or non-Western, into plagiarised deductions for followers of new trendy scientific ‘religious’ manuals of instruction ,which tend more and more to regard the arts of literature and film-making as either servile or redundant activities.

This process is far less productive in sustaining the hard-earned tradition of New York City’s lucrative creative achieveme
nts. Writers help establish an attractive identity to cities and nations; New York-based fiction writers like John Ohara and Truman Capote wrote two of New York’s greatest novels, ‘BUTTERFIELD 8’ and ‘BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S’, in styles which either revealed the voice of the writer not included in the story, or included in the story; meaning the ‘I’ writing is also the story’s central character.

Such a personal style suits the responsible proclamation or expression of ‘identity’, not simply on a personal level, but also in social and municipal terms. In the first novel, by the end of the first two chapters, we have heard of Washington Square, Horatio Street, Madison Avenue, Park Ave:, Murray Hill, Sheridan Square, 14th Street, Lexington Ave: etc, the New Yorker and the New York Times.

In the second novel, a vivid and introspective picture of a city as a social construct affecting the lifestyle and attitudes of characters emerges, and we hear of Third Ave, Central Park, Fifth Ave, Fifty-Third Street, Rockefeller Plaza, the 42nd Street Library, etc.

‘Butterfield 8’ was first published in 1935, and reprinted many times in America and Europe; the same goes for ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’, first published in 1950. These distant first publications have not affected the relevance or vivacity of these two novels for the cultured young of today, since both capture the risk, the adventure, the pitfalls of youth, and we know there are fragments of the lifestyle of Gloria Wandrous, Martha, Emily, and Holly Golightly, the young female characters of these novels, as well as the males, in the experiences or attitudes of many New Yorkers, or others anywhere today for that matter.

There is a specific cosmopolitan American cultural identity to offer and add to the world; this American culture finds most of its best promotional outlets in New York City, but also Los Angeles. It is identified by a distinct cosmopolitan style and content in writing, theatre, film, music, fashion, dance and contemporary painting produced by residents of any race.

Certainly, most styles of writing in the first person occurred in England before it occurred in America, but what distinguishes the American identity is the tonal style of Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, also their geographical locations, and the novels of Faulkner, Hemingway, Horace McCoy, Dashiell Hammett, Ralph Ellison, Leroi Jones, Jack Kerouac, Cormac McCarthy, etc, also the poetry of Hart Crane, Robert Frost, Frank Ohara, Diane Wakoski, Rita Dove, Jori Graham, etc.

You will not find similar tones of writing from British literature. In ‘Butterfield 8’ and ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’, the approach to writing offers examples of journalistic fiction,  cinematic voice-over cinematic narration,  also abundant cultural references and abrupt scene changes. All this means is that asserting one’s identity and environment takes precedence over imitating the tradition of one’s older Anglo-European literature. This is how American culture asserted its distinction and value in the world, and New York played a major role in this venture.

Why should anyone, anyone important anyway, pay much attention to a nation of immigrants who have remained the same, and produced the same culture as their original ancestral lands?

Many people might find it more interesting to deal with the original source of such second-fiddle facsimile cultures. When we think of Jazz, of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Stan Getz, Chick Corea, Weather Report, such instrumental music, largely the creation of African and European descendants in America, despite touches of influence from these continents, Jazz is without doubt not African music but originally American music of and by Americans.

Even American instrumental movie theme music like the ‘Theme From A Summer Place’ the ‘Theme From The Big Country’, ‘Theme From The Apartment’ etc, are distinctly of an American ambiance.

A people or nation, by the way, without imaginative instrumental music would be subject to the endless agitation and harangue of different voices and words in songs. In New York architecture, a change occurred from dominant Anglo colonial forms when Richardson, McKim and White introduced aspects of the American vernacular in building.

Yet New York showed early wise eclecticism by importing Chinese wallpaper, and the apartment was introduced from Paris, which helped curb housing shortage and saved space.

Chinese wares also replaced much heavy American brass and earthen ware. New York City also utilized antique Roman and Greek classical forms to uplift and refine the minds of its diverse citizens. We associate the New York skyscrapers  with the heights of Western modernity and technology, but who are its most naturally skillful construction workers able to endure great heights?

For generations over the past 75 years, Mohawk Indians and other native Indians from New York and Quebec have been the essential and indispensable workers assembling New York City’s skyscrapers. Their families have been well-off for generations.

The rise of New York’s Abstract Expressionist painters since the 1940s had its roots in distinct American influences, whether of the civic environment, the rugged western States, or Native Indian artifacts.

Painters like De Kooning, a Dutch stowaway to New York City who became one of its greatest modern painters who captured the city’s and country’s contrasts of speed, shape, and colour, and Franz Kline, who introduced a new feeling for the New York city environment, utilizing the Zen brushstroke to harness and humanize the city’s urban character.

Kline became obsessed with the wooden construction buttresses, which, to this day, remain in use in New York City. Kline’s genius understood it would be silly and stagnant to render such structures realistically, instead of capturing their poetic and imaginative values as sensitive energetic humanized signs.

Similarly, many radio stations of New York specialise in specific styles of music, day and night. Stations like CBS-FM offer the best classic American Pop bands, like Sly & The Family Stone, The Steve Miller Band, Cool & The Gang, Chic, Pat Benatar, Steely Dan, or Eddie Money, the hip legendary New York singer with beautiful songs like ‘Baby Hold On To Me’ and ‘Two Tickets To Paradise’.

On the other hand, WQXR-FM totally specialises in the best classical and instrumental music, with biographies and creative discussions thrown in, artists like Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Schumann, etc.

We can lie back in bed at night and enjoy such stations as the city’s police cruisers occasionally wail in communication and vigilance against the usual crimes which blemish the names of cities and nations everywhere.