Terry Teachout's love of theater, his leisurely pacing, and his old-fashioned-ish musical tastes sometimes leave me with the impression that he's a bit out-of-step with contemporary culture. But then he contributes a column that's so on it snaps into focus just how with it he is, how much he understands the pulse of contemporary life. Finally, the tastes reflected in his column are not his notion of the zeitgeist; rather they are personal appeals on behalf of art he loves. (Reminder: There's no shame in being a critic who gets to write about what they like -- popular tastes be damned -- as long as they don't pretend their vision of the world is the world.)

Anyhoo, a recent example of his very with it sense of the world, below.

The national media have mostly stopped covering high culture—nowadays they are besotted by Hollywood—meaning that it is no longer possible for an artist like Mr. Albee to win true fame. Who was the last American poet to become famous in the household-word sense? Robert Frost. The last choreographer? Jerome Robbins. The last visual artist? Andy Warhol. Moreover, such celebrity-making mechanisms as still exist no longer have the power to unilaterally declare an artist worthy of renown. Yes, Jonathan Franzen was on the cover of Time a month ago, but how many people who haven't read any of Mr. Franzen's novels can tell you who he is? That's the real test of fame, and it is no longer accessible to high-culture artists.

Is that so bad? What, after all, does a serious artist get out of being famous other than money and distraction?Did Truman Capote benefit from becoming a too-familiar face, or was his career shortened as a result of his celebrity? Those are fair questions, and they can't be answered simply. On the other hand, I'm sure that it can't be good for high culture when none of its practitioners are known outside a tight little circle of connoisseurs. How many Americans discovered live theater a half-century ago because they happened to read about Edward Albee in Life or see him on "The Tonight Show"? And how many of their grandchildren will fail to make such life-changing discoveries because those opportunities have dried up?"

Well, as a counterpoint (and as part of our obligation to our new, all-Kanye, all-the-time format) let's leave the last word to Kanye:

That's what you get, yo.

And here's Terry, talking...