New Yorkers, like the rest of literate America, are worried. Literature - or at least an interest in writing is rapidly declining as fewer noses get stuck in fewer books. It all means America is caught in a growing tide of indifference as far as great writing is concerned. Tennessee who? Walt who? Updike? But apparently recent surveys reveal that less than 50 per cent of Americans over 18 can now manage a complete novel, a play, a short story or a collection of poetry. And the downward trend towards illiteracy is not bound demographically, affecting, as it does, all social classes and all ethnic groups. Blame the electronic media for it, if you will, but sympathise with institutions, such as museums, theatres, libraries and so on who rely on unpaid help. The helpers are generally more likely to be the readers than nonreaders. Little is selling in the bookstores except religion. Still, Hillary Clinton's book is out "full of first-time revelations". Called, disturbingly, The American Evita, the book raises a question in the mind. Wasn't Evita a high-class whore? Rumour has it Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas are tipped for the inevitable movie, no doubt to accommodate the new non-literates. Everybody's dancing this week, which may have something to do with the great success Birmingham Royal Ballet is having at the Lincoln Center, where a large band in the square has taken over and thousands of people are boogieing nightly. When I go to the ballet I join in and it is a great sight, seeing young and old strutting their stuff. Wasn't it Shakespeare who said: "Age cannot wither her nor custom stale her infinite enchantments"? It's a great line, it held true of Cleopatra and it still holds true today of a very old Broadway baby I met bopping away with a very young partner outside the Met. Eyes glistening like an old turtle, her white hair puffed out like an atomic explosion, she still put her hips about like nobody's business. "Listen cookie, there's three things that drive me wild: guys, pistachio ice-cream and the Mambo! Wanna join in?" We swapped birthday dates and I discover that next week Julia is 91. But that's New York. Inside the Met (Julia couldn't manage the stairs -"wearing too much gold, sugar") Birmingham Royal Ballet was holding a public rehearsal before the evening show. Bissfully cool and soothing in the half dark, the Met was a sanctury for those escaping from the New York inferno that is July. At 2pm Molly Smolen, one of BRB's top seed, comes out of the wings to rehearse Ashton's Five Brahms Waltzes in the manner of Isadora Duncan. This is a solo piece which Smolen, pictured, has danced regularly, but even so it's still practice, practice, practice. The stage lights pick up Smolen's Greek tunic. They also pick up her Arctic boots worn as foot warmers. Her husband, the dancer Tiit Helimets, comes out of the wings carrying her stole. The boots go, and the solo piano begins. It jerks along yet she doesn't lose her patience as the technicians wander about and the stop-start rehearsal goes on. Desmond Kelly, BRB's assistant artistic director, sharpens a movement or explains an attitude. Smolen complies. Then suddenly it is all done and she takes off beautifully and the invited audience applauds. I would hate an audience in at this point but Smolen keeps her cool and she is a true pro. Baryshnikov came to the first night. A woman in the box office queue spotted him. "Oh look," she said to a friend, "that's Baryshnikov, the star of Sex and the City." He said he would come on to the first night party. He didn't, but anyway, I've always found Baryshnikov's English stilted and hard to follow. Only as a dancer does he impress me. But the party was great. BRB dancer Iain Mackay's brother Rory (a soloist with BRB) turned up in a kilt. Nobody from the Joffrey Ballet or the K-Ballet achieved that, I may say. Marion Tait, BRB's ballet mistress, an old friend and as stunningly elegant as ever, introduced me at what turned out to be a popping party to Barry Wordsworth BRB's music director, who had conducted that night, a man with magic in his baton. Barry said something profound about the parity between ballet and opera but I had been partying for an hour and do you know not a damned word remained. New York is flooding to Spider-Man 2, the sequel to the initial blockbuster, making it one of the few bona-fide hits this summer. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azskaban has netted $220 million dollars around the nation's cinemas. But New York-ers in the know reckon the most satisfying film in the city this July is the anti-Bush documentary Fahrenheight 9-11. I asked an American friend why. He is not a Bush fan. Sadly, I cannot print his answer in a family newspaper. The dancers at BRB were planning to see De-Lovely, the story of Cole Porter, which features Kevin Kline. Porter's music was coming out of a street restaurant on a hot evening last week . . . "you're the Tops, you're the Tower of Pisa, you're the Tops, you're the Mona Lisa . . . " "Old songs are more than tunes, they are little houses which are hearts once lived," somebody once wrote somewhere. Yet Porter, with all this success, was not a happy man and suffered a leg amputation in 1958 after his socialite wife died of emphysema. Ater her death Cole became reclusive and stopped writing. Eventually, he simply stopped speaking. Let's hope the film gets it right. In so many cases they don't. New Yorkers are encouraged blithley to spend, it seems to be a way of life and to hell with the financial complications. I note that Bottega Veneta on Fifth Avenue has everything custom made from walnut dining tables to leather covered doorknobs. Imagine what those would look like in suede after 12 months hard wear. For those whose eyes can take the dazzle of diamonds, Damiani, or so I'm assured, has everything for glitter queens. The New York jewellers boast a clutch of ardent fans, including Brad Pitt. Apparently, the Troy star used Damiani for Jennifer Aniston's engagement ring which Pitt codesigned with a staff worker. Now, our Braddy has fallen into middle aged (40 is middle age-even in New York) so perhaps he's looking for a life as a jewellery designer when sword and sandal epics leave him in need of an inhaler. I skipped the diamonds, the couture "Minou" sunglasses by Nour and various other fribbles including uninteresting check shirts by Riflessi, the latest Italian rag trade hustlers, and I actually fell in love (well, not all that deeply) with one of the new upright room fans in a tourist junk shop on 57th Street. Why? Well, it had a plastic Marilyn Monroe with her skirt blowing up just like in that movie. Awful? Of course. But in the Big Apple, kitsch is currently chic. | 
