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“To American critics, Gershwin sounded exactly like what they wanted to get away from. It was the essence of their own time and place represented musically, just as James Joyce had verbally rendered Dublin in Ulysses. This kind of rendering absolutely had to include the time and place's vulgarity, its flash and its hustle, and what can only be called its gorgeous ugliness. Two years earlier, G.K. Chesterton had pointed out how beautiful Times Square must look to someone who couldn't read, and here was that same thought set to music. If Gershwin's music had been any purer and more correct, it wouldn't have been New York.” — Wilfrid Sheed
To American critics, Gershwin sounded exactly like what they wanted to get away from. It was the essence of their own time and place represented musically, just as James Joyce had verbally rendered Dublin in Ulysses. This kind of rendering absolutely had to include the time and place's vulgarity, its flash and its hustle, and what can only be called its gorgeous ugliness. Two years earlier, G.K. Chesterton had pointed out how beautiful Times Square must look to someone who couldn't read, and here was that same thought set to music. If Gershwin's music had been any purer and more correct, it wouldn't have been New York.