1. I wish Levine had spent more time talking about Olmstead and Central Park. Maps of his designs for the Park would have been effective in making Levine's point.

2. The whole point of Levine's book becomes clear in the epilogue. He wants to show that the idea of Culture has a history so that we can now reject it and embrace his postmodernist appeal to diversity.

3. Levine argues that his postmodernist approach is imperiled, but this is a laughable position. He mentions only Bloom and Bennett--two oafs--as opposed to his view.

4. Ironically, creationists have explicitly found Bloom's opponents' arguments useful. If everyone deserves a seat at the table, why not them?

5. Levine criticizes Yardley for saying that academics have embraced diversity for ignoble reasons, by which he means economic reasons, but Eco makes a similar argument in
"Interpretation and Overinterpretation."

6. Levine argues that Culture is now decidedly more open, but he mentions only relatively esoteric jazz as examples of this openness. I doubt that he would let in Herman's Hermits or
Kenny G or the Spinners.

7. I doubt that postmodernists will be able to keep the openness that Levine supports. As he
emphasizes, accessibility is the key. A discussion of Madonna's videos with an impenetrable thicket of impenetrable references to Derrida, Lacan, Heidegger and Foucault is not accessible.

8. I also doubt that postmodernists will be able to keep this openness because to embrace popular art without sneering would entail embracing middle-class values, and most postmodernists are not interested in doing this.

9. A perhaps more substantial reason for doubt is the argument that Katherine Gerould makes (218) that the very idea of art contains the idea of distinction. Doesn't spending so much time
thinking about culture turn it into Culture?

10. Now for my own views. I will probably go to my grave thinking that it is better to read Shakespeare and Jane Austen than Mickey Spillane and Dan Brown and that it is helpful to read about Shakespeare and Austen before reading them. I also appreciate the fact that I can
see Shakespeare's plays performed as he wrote them and with a relatively quiet audience. Is Levine really in favor of colorizing movies? I am eager to embrace popular culture but believe that it must carry its own weight by possessing some value. Not to do so is to treat popular culture in a patronizing manner, which is really just sneering at it. I believe that many works of popular culture can do so. I also believe that this approach to culture, although it requires work, can and should be widely shared.