English and American Style.

[MANICHAEAN]

I have always admired the candour of Raymond Chandler when he writes outside of his novels. Today I was reading the following he wrote in regard to the above subject, and would be interested in current opinions among Lit Net contributers:
"America's style (in writing) is utilitarian and essentially vulger. Why then can it produce great writing or at any rate, writing as great as this age is likely to produce? The answer is, it can't. All the best American writing has been done by men who are, or at some time were, cosmopolitians They found here a certain freedom of expression, a certain richness of vocabulary, a certain wideness of interest. But they had to have European taste to use the material"

[LeavesOfGrass]

Quite simply, the American writer produces novels an poetry to make a fortune; thus, they go mainstream and are content with this. Writers from other countries typically live under a style of government that does not push materialism, therefore, the author of (i.e. Romania) writes a novel that the layman would not appreciate. He creates something that can be read on three levels and analyzed for centuries to come. He writes not for the fame and wealth, but for the sake of art. Unfortunately, American authors produce 2 sometimes 4 novels a year. They require no thought and the stories are relatively simple. A masterpiece must be thought out and raised, matured and revised over and over again. It will endure, though it may not be a big seller. But, it will be studied in universities for years to come.

[WingedWolf]

On some level, I feel like Americans (in general) are children. The US is a very young country and Americans still look toward Europe as a big brother to learn what it means to be cultured and enlightened.

As far as "going mainstream," I think that is true anywhere. There are always works of high culture in all art forms, and works made purely for light fun and entertainment.

[Lumiere]

Excuse my frankness, but I think that quote is hogwash. Absolute hogwash in it's purest form.

I understand where it's coming from, but the only reason American literature doesn't hold it's weight like English literature does is because England has had a lot longer to build up a database of excellent literary art (which it has done, no question about that).

Not all American writers are after money. Not even a majority of them. Out of the thousands of writers in America, only 5 percent of them make enough to support themselves, let alone live extravagantly. If you're after money, it's generally best to steer clear of art, wherever you find yourself on the globe. And it's not like Dickens wasn't hoping to make a buck, either.

It would not have bothered me if the quote had simply said something along the lines of: "I think English literature is better than American literature." What bothers me is the suggestion that people with an "American mindset" are essentially incapable of writing the good stuff. Besides, are the "American mindset" and the "English mindset" so distinctly incompatible? I think it's all a bit silly, really. Humans are humans. Good writers are good writers.

[blazeofglory]

On some level, I feel like Americans (in general) are children. The US is a very young country and Americans still look toward Europe as a big brother to learn what it means to be cultured and enlightened.



In fact it is the reverse course and it is Europe who look to America

[aquarium444]

I have always admired the candour of Raymond Chandler when he writes outside of his novels. Today I was reading the following he wrote in regard to the above subject, and would be interested in current opinions among Lit Net contributers:
"America's style (in writing) is utilitarian and essentially vulger. Why then can it produce great writing or at any rate, writing as great as this age is likely to produce? The answer is, it can't. All the best American writing has been done by men who are, or at some time were, cosmopolitians They found here a certain freedom of expression, a certain richness of vocabulary, a certain wideness of interest. But they had to have European taste to use the material"

It might depend upon what genre the writers work in. The American horror literature of the past is strong. I think that Hemingway might fit into that category. I have read just a couple of this stories, but the quote seems to make sense. On the other hand, what is European taste? Most major themes come from the English influence. I'm not well read in history, but I think that if you read their fiction than you would be busy for the rest of your life. That is a very large topic and the quote is a snub.

[MANICHAEAN]

Lumiere. I'm not into slagging off American mindsets. Americans appear to have quick open minds and are not so subjected to what in England at one time was the stultifying effects of a more rigid training. It seems however that such traditions as Americans have in the use of their language is derived from English tradition and there is just enough resentment about this to cause from time to time a perverse use of ungrammaticalities ---- "just to show' em".
Americans, having at the current juncture, the most complex civilisation in the world, still like to think of themselves as a plain people.
If one was obliged to take the viewpoint that political power still dominates culture, then American will dominate English for a long time to come. Lets us hope that English will not go on the defrensive and contribute anything but a sort of waspish criticism of forms and manners.

[Virgil]

I have always admired the candour of Raymond Chandler when he writes outside of his novels. Today I was reading the following he wrote in regard to the above subject, and would be interested in current opinions among Lit Net contributers:
"America's style (in writing) is utilitarian and essentially vulger. Why then can it produce great writing or at any rate, writing as great as this age is likely to produce? The answer is, it can't. All the best American writing has been done by men who are, or at some time were, cosmopolitians They found here a certain freedom of expression, a certain richness of vocabulary, a certain wideness of interest. But they had to have European taste to use the material"

I think there is much to be said about American versus British writing, both in themes and styles, but Chandler's quote is so simple it's ridiculous. I'm with Lumiere on this.

[MANICHAEAN]

No problem Virgil. Chandler's quote is not so much simple as blunt.

Would the likes of Hemingway without his experience in; Italy, Spain, France, Africa & Cuba have been the writer he was without this "cosmopoliton" background?

No doubt I will be besieged now with the names of home grown American writers.

But what Chandler was saying with the subtle diplomacy of a verbal sledgehammer was that for many writers, (& in this instance Americans), their creativity comes from the places they choose to immerse themselves in, or the persons they choose to associate with. Graham Green derived his material from everything ranging from; whores to Jesuit priests, from the Blitz in London to leper colonies in the Congo.

Paris was at one time, home for home to the American writing set. Not sure where they are nesting now!

[Virgil]

No problem Virgil. Chandler's quote is not so much simple as blunt.

Would the likes of Hemingway without his experience in; Italy, Spain, France, Africa & Cuba have been the writer he was without this "cosmopoliton" background?

No doubt I will be besieged now with the names of home grown American writers.


Absolutely you would be besieged. It makes no sense at all when the preponderance of American writers didn't experience Europe the way Hemingway did. Hemingway is the anonmaly to the rule and therefore Chandler may be blunt, but he's wrong, or if not completely wrong, so overly simplistic that it's meaningless. Bluntness has nothing to do with being right or wrong.

[MANICHAEAN]

Virgil. Then be so gracious as to concur that one of the most striking currents in transatlantic cultural history was the migration of several generations of American writers, (not just Hemingway as the anonmaly) to Europe. It represented at the time a complex model of aesthetic refinement, beauty and historical depth, decadence and moral doubt.

While in the 19th century writers like; Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Mark Twain and Henry James retreated to the "Old World" to search for the European roots of the "New", a second wave of creative talent left the US to join the vanguard of International Modernism. For many of this "Lost Generation" their careers were launched in the inspiring turmoil of inter-war Paris.

And before I take the "incoming flak" let me add to the names already noted: Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Ezra Pound, Edith Wharton, Gertrude Stein, Stephen Crane, Joseph Conrad, Ford Maddox Ford and Henry Miller. At a later date Raymond Chandler spent some time in Europe, but I will not tempt Providence by highlighting he that has become the bete noir of this discussion.

Finally, lets get past the legerdemain thrust & parry of such words as: simple & blunt. Whatever the style of delivery; the crux of the matter is that a significant number of prominent writers from America, at a particular period of history benefited in their work & in their careers from their retreat to the Gallic metropolis.

[OrphanPip]

Virgil. Then be so gracious as to concur that one of the most striking currents in transatlantic cultural history was the migration of several generations of American writers, (not just Hemingway as the anonmaly) to Europe. It represented at the time a complex model of aesthetic refinement, beauty and historical depth, decadence and moral doubt.

While in the 19th century writers like; Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Mark Twain and Henry James retreated to the "Old World" to search for the European roots of the "New", a second wave of creative talent left the US to join the vanguard of International Modernism. For many of this "Lost Generation" their careers were launched in the inspiring turmoil of inter-war Paris.

And before I take the "incoming flak" let me add to the names already noted: Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Ezra Pound, Edith Wharton, Gertrude Stein, Stephen Crane, Joseph Conrad, Ford Maddox Ford and Henry Miller. At a later date Raymond Chandler spent some time in Europe, but I will not tempt Providence by highlighting he that has become the bete noir of this discussion.

Finally, lets get past the legerdemain thrust & parry of such words as: simple & blunt. Whatever the style of delivery; the crux of the matter is that a significant number of prominent writers from America, at a particular period of history benefited in their work & in their careers from their retreat to the Gallic metropolis.

Let's not get ridiculous. Stephen Crane did all of his best writing way before he moved to Europe. Moreover, Hawthorne only lived in England for 4 years prior to his death, and he was there on an American political appointment. It's a bit of a stretch to jump from the fact that these people once lived in Europe for a short period to the statement that their talent was inspired by the magical properties of Europe on artistic talent. I also fail to see how an occasional holiday and speaking tour of Europe can be argued to have had such a profound effect on the writing of Twain.

Also, Joseph Conrad was born in Poland and moved to England, and Ford was English... Henry Miller isn't even worth mentioning as an artist either.

You're also conveniently ignoring European authors that went to the USA. Isherwood, Nabokov, Lawrence and Auden as prime examples. Not to mention the masses of talented American authors that didn't live in Europe: Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, Faulkner, Williams, Steinbeck, etc.

[Virgil]

Thank you O.P. Quick question O.P. I'm not familiar with much Canadian literature, but would you say Canadian literature is closer to American or British, or is it its own distinct voice? I'm sure it has its own distinct voice, but I was curious as to whether it feels closer to this side of the Atlantic.



Virgil. Then be so gracious as to concur that one of the most striking currents in transatlantic cultural history was the migration of several generations of American writers, (not just Hemingway as the anonmaly) to Europe. It represented at the time a complex model of aesthetic refinement, beauty and historical depth, decadence and moral doubt.

Ok, there was a ten year period of roughly the 1920s where a sizable number of American writers lived in Europe, and as O.P. points a number of english writers immigrated to the US. But in the overall scheme of things, it's not a huge number, and frankly as we get into the 20th century the whole world is more cosmopolitan with the ability to move about with modern transportation. D.H. Lawrence lived in New Mexico for most of the 1920s. I still think that Chandler's statement is incredibly simple.

[stlukesguild]

Artists have always been attracted to the cultural centers... economic, political, and military "super-powers". At different point in history different cities/states took on this role: Rome, Florence, Andalusia, Holland, London, Madrid, Paris. At the start of the 20th century London, Paris, and Vienna were quite likely the 3 leading cultural centers of the West... Paris more than any other. Not only did Paris attract American "bumpkins" such as Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and Man Ray, but it also attracted "sophisticated" Europeans such as Picasso, Modigliani, Soutine, Chagall, Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde, Yeats, Stravinsky, Nijinsky, etc... Art not only follows the flow of money... but it follows the flow of ideas and different cultures. Where is the world beside Paris could one be exposed to the leading writers from the US, Spanish and Italian painters, Russian composers and choreographers... see the latest films, see the recently "discovered" art of Africa and Japan?

With the Second World War the entire power and cultural structure of the world shifted. Artists and writers no longer pined for London and Paris but rather for New York and California. These were now the cultural centers of the West... something that many Europeans struggled (and still struggle) to deny. As an artist I can assure you that a good many American artists would certainly love to spend some time in Paris or London... just as they would love to spend some time in Berlin, Tokyo, Beijing, or even Rio de Janeiro... exploring other cultures... exploring the histories of a culture unlike their own. But the art centers? New York. Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco... even Miami are more central to the art market and what is happening in art today than is London, Paris, or Vienna.

As for the notion that Americans are too young to compete with Europeans... certainly I agree that America has yet to have produced a body of art and literature and music to rival that of Europe... but then again, Europe has had a bit longer to amass this cultural history. I would have no problem with placing the achievements of American culture along side those of any European country over the last 100 years: Hemingway, Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, Steinbeck, Eugene O'Niel, Tennessee Williams, Richard Wright, Richard Wilbur, Anthony Hecht, Saul Bellow, Flannery O'Connor, James Merrill, Cormac McCarthy, Gore Vidal, Jackson Pollack, William DeKooning, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, Ansel Adams, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Edward Weston, Billy Wilder, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Cecil B. De Mille, Orson Welles, Frank Capra, John Huston, Francis Ford Coppola, Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, jazz, the blues, rock music... it would seem that American culture achieved more than its share during the last century.

I would also note that the youth of a culture does not really denote much about what it may or may not achieve at a given point in history... something Emerson recognized when he suggested he would much rather live in a culture without much of a cultural history that was on the ascendancy, than a culture at its peak that was looking at a probably decline. British literature in the 16th century had little going for it it by way of history in comparison to the far more "sophisticated" cultures of Italy and France... and yet need we discuss what was achieved in British literature over the 16th and 1t centuries?

[Jozanny]

Chandler may have over-reached, but he is not wrong in the context that he meant it. Melville is vulgar, so is Faulkner, but this doesn't detract from their impact. I would leave the U.S. if I could walk, because the discrimination against me is as bad as institutional racism used to be--but what prevents me is I already know European disability law is worse than my native lip service. I am suffering just as much as Hemingway ever did, in terms of being a disabled writer, not just a citizen-- and when my strength finally breaks? Well. This is not a just country, and never was, despite its periods of populist correction.

[MANICHAEAN]

OP
Stephen Crane:
For the Hearst newspapers Crane covered the war between Greece & Turkey. He needed to see if war really was as he depicted it in "Red Badge of Courage". In England Crane was among members of the Fabian Society & he finished his powerful novella "The Monster" & three of his finest short stories, " The Bride Comes To Yellow Sky," "Death and the Child," and "The Blue Hotel." Crane thought himself as an American attacked back home. He wrote:" There seem so many of them in America who want to kill, bury and forget me purely out of unkindness and envy and - my unworthiness if you chose."

Nathaniel Hawthorne:
Lived in England for four years granted & then one and a half years in Italy which you selectively ignore. Upon his return in 1860 he wrote "The Marble Faun", his first new book in seven years.

Mark Twain:
After undertaking an tour of Europe & The Middle East his compiled travel letters became "The Innocents Abroad" the best selling of Twain's works during his life time. A second tour of Europe resulted in "A Tramp Abroad".

Henry Miller:
Lived in Paris till the outbreak of World War II, a period highly creative for him. George Orwell wrote in 1940: " Here in my opinion is the only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English speaking races for some years past."

Live in contact with dreams and you will get something of their charm: live in contact with facts and you will get something of their brutality.

[OrphanPip]

None of that contradicts anything I said, now why don't you demonstrate in some way that any of their writing actually undergoes significant change as a result of spending time in Europe. Also, my point was that Henry Miller is a ****ty writer, not that he didn't live in England.

[JCamilo]

Strange would be if americans writers had no change after a contact with Europe. They would be like the proverbial monkeys?
However, more strange is too think it is not the same way around, Poe alone change english and french literature (If no portuguese, russian, etc) and Baudelaire and Conan Doyle never passed by europe. Anyways, it is very hard to build any argument in a simple sentence, the context may be one completely different...

[OrphanPip]

Strange would be if americans writers had no change after a contact with Europe. They would be like the proverbial monkeys?
However, more strange is too think it is not the same way around, Poe alone change english and french literature (If no portuguese, russian, etc) and Baudelaire and Conan Doyle never passed by europe. Anyways, it is very hard to build any argument in a simple sentence, the context may be one completely different...

The point isn't whether or not living and visiting Europe has an effect on a person, just like any event in someone's life will have an effect on them, but that somehow an experience in Europe elevates the quality of American writers. It is nonsense to say Stephen Crane wasn't a talented writer when he wrote The Red Badge of Courage, but somehow when he moved to England after his trial he underwent some transformation that magnified his ability.

Not to mention other notions like American writers write only for money. Dumas and Dickens were certainly some of the most commercial writers in history.

[JCamilo]

It is nonsense to say that european experience wont elevated the level, it is nonsense to say anything because the word vulgar can mean popular, can mean mundade, can mean a lot of things.
It is nonsense even to discuss it because USA literature is not soemthing adrift, their very idiom belongs to europe, I wonder of Chandler was not being specific to i dunno, detective novels...

[stlukesguild]

I find it ridiculous to suggest that an experience of living in Europe somehow elevated the quality of American writers. By the same token, does an extended stay in America lead to a decline and debasement of European writers? Lets face it, Dickinson and Wallace Stevens and the artist Joseph Cornell never left the US... and yet their art is at once deeply American... and deeply rooted in European traditions. Baudelaire, by the same token, never lived in the US, and yet his work was certainly influenced by Poe. Cultural influences need not be experienced first hand in the nation of their origin.

[MANICHAEAN]

OP
You certainly have the hots for Henry Miller.
Any particular reason: a bit distasteful?
Don't develop more indignation than you can contain.

[JCamilo]

I find it ridiculous to suggest that an experience of living in Europe somehow elevated the quality of American writers. By the same token, does an extended stay in America lead to a decline and debasement of European writers? Lets face it, Dickinson and Wallace Stevens and the artist Joseph Cornell never left the US... and yet their art is at once deeply American... and deeply rooted in European traditions. Baudelaire, by the same token, never lived in the US, and yet his work was certainly influenced by Poe. Cultural influences need not be experienced first hand in the nation of their origin.

Obviously, staying in USA also elevated the american writers. Going to Mexico too. Just like Robert Louis Stevenson was elevated by the south Seas and Richard Burton by Africa and Orient, etc.

In the end Hawthorne would be Hawthorne had he never left AMerica, went to Australia, moon or watever. It is irrelevant, biography details, it is very easy to pick a momment in someone life and say that was he changed by having an experience, as if that is not exactly what happens with everyone.