You will have guessed from my title that what I have to say will be neither reassuring nor very constructive. I do believe the arts are in a bad way in this country. Measured by admissions to live performances of legitimate theatre and music, our art consumption per head is less than a half of West Germany's and Austria's, little better than half of Norway's and Switzerland's and less than a third of such East European countries like Hungary, Czechoslovakia and East Germany. In a cultural center like San Francisco, the past season's more than 1.8 million admissions are very impressive when related to her 700,000 population - they probably exceed those in any city of comparable size anywhere in the world. But when one remembers our suburban way of life and the fact that San Francisco is the downtown of 4 l/2 million Bay Area residents, then this turns out to be not quite so high a figure, more in keeping with our low national average. The American national average used in these comparisons is very approximate and subject to a wide margin of error; but other indices show much the same disparity. For example, the sale in this country of recorded serious music, at 4 per cent of total sales records, is about a third of the corresponding European ratios; 12 percent in England and 14 percent in France and West Germany. (p. 58-69)