American Literature has had a huge influence in the Western World. Poe was a superstar long before Doyle. Ambrose Bierce has always been a legend, F Scott Fitzgerald is a literary lcon. Obviously it is a sad thing for our American buddies to feel inferior to our authors, Shakespeare, Diderot, Dickens, the list is endless. Come on brilliant literature is universal, no need to feel inferior. Pip, Pip old chap.
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I couldn't tell you anything about modern American literature. The only modern stuff that I read seems to be Canadian. I read a lot of the older stuff though, Steinbeck most of all.
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My Aunty Helen comes from Ottowa and she tells me everything. Why once she told me about an ice storm that paralysed the whole nation. You have got to remember she is getting on a bit. Never once did she mention Steinbeck. Though she did recall Ray Mears saving her from El Ninio.Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf
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Aside from the obvious (Roth, McCarthy etc), recently there have been Portuguese editions of some great American writers-- and they have been quite well received! Pynchon, for instance. A translation of William Gaddis Agapê Agape gathered consensual approval. (The fact that the cover was brilliant helped a bit.)
Diderot? Doyle? Can you name a serious critic who puts any American author above Shakespeare, Dickens, Montaigne, Cervantes, Dante, Homer, Tolstoy or Goethe? American literature has had *an* influence. But a great influence? Looks like a moderate influence to me. Maybe about the same as Sweden?American Literature has had a huge influence in the Western World. Poe was a superstar long before Doyle. Ambrose Bierce has always been a legend, F Scott Fitzgerald is a literary lcon. Obviously it is a sad thing for our American buddies to feel inferior to our authors, Shakespeare, Diderot, Dickens, the list is endless. Come on brilliant literature is universal, no need to feel inferior. Pip, Pip old chap.
Yes. I wasn't trying to defend the UK's record!
hmmm...many will say that Poe, Melville, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Faulkner, T.S.Eliot are shoulders to shoulders with those guys. Many will point, Moby Dick is a serious contender for greatest novel ever, and really... talking about influence, Poe is a serious, much serious contender.
Is literature a contest? Surely simply discovering more great writers and novels, no matter where from, is the goal?
And then there is the issue of influence within one's cultural traditions. Most American authors will have had slightly more influence on other American authors. Certainly Hemingway influenced more American writers writing today than Goethe. An exception to this rule would be Shakespeare and Homer.
Last edited by Drkshadow03; 01-12-2011 at 03:42 PM.
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Diderot? Doyle? Can you name a serious critic who puts any American author above Shakespeare, Dickens, Montaigne, Cervantes, Dante, Homer, Tolstoy or Goethe? American literature has had *an* influence. But a great influence? Looks like a moderate influence to me. Maybe about the same as Sweden?
Now that's just nonsense. Certainly America has not produced a rival to Shakespeare or Dante... but neither has any other nation over the last 100 years. It would be difficult to find a nation that has produced a stronger and more influential body of literature over the last century than the US: T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, Sherwood Anderson, Marianne Moore, e.e. cummings, Eugene O'Niel, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Nathaniel West, Saul Bellow, Flannery O'Connor, Vladimir Nabokov, Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller, Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, etc... I doubt that Sweden or the whole of Scandinavia can quite match this output over the last 100 years.
The German (and to a far lesser extent, the Italians) absolutely dominated the achievements in classical music for much of the recorded history of music to an extent that far outstrips the English/French dominance in literature, but even there it would be ridiculous to downplay the American contributions and impact upon the last 100 years of music.
The reality, for better or worse, is that artistic achievement and influence has always followed wealth and power. This is not simply because those with power have the ability to promote what speaks in their behalf (as revisionist theory would have it). Rather, this is because art is dependent upon wealth and wealth attracts the strongest artists... and in most instances, the great economic/military powers are open to outside influence as a result of trade, military conquest, and immigration. The Renaissance flourished in central Italy among great trading states (Florence, Venice, Milan) and not in hermetic England or Russia.
I state this in spite of the fact that yes, I agree that the US has not produced anyone to rival Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Tolstoy, Michelangelo, Rubens, Rembrandt, Bach, Beethoven, or Mozart. I also state this in spite of the fact that I am an ardent reader of world literature and would include Rilke, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, Eugenio Montale, Italo Calvino, Yeats, Proust, Garcia-Lorca, Neruda, Pessoa, J.L. Borges, and many others among my favorite writers of the last century... I also say this while admitting that the America contributions to the arts may be far more profound in music, architecture, and certainly film than it has been in literature... and yet downplaying America as a minor player in the realm of literature is ridiculous... albeit something is used to hearing from JBI, our great representative of anti-American resentment.
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I think you're right on that distinction, though I wouldn't say either approach is better, just different. Because American lit aims for a large scope, it's usually more hit and miss than British.
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I guess JBI is having a lot of fun in Beijing, at the moment. was really looking forward to one of his anti-American tirades.
And, to add a bit of a more practical reason to why wealth attracts art: You can't really spend a lot of time writing/composing/painting if you're trying to feed your family.
Last edited by Mutatis-Mutandis; 01-12-2011 at 11:43 PM.
High scope seems too vague.
You mean like Homer, Dante, Milton, Cervantes, or Shakespeare?
Actually I'm not sure I know what you mean.
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That high scope is too vague, does americans really are those trying to aimd high scopes? Milton trying to reach an epical tradition with 2000 years qualify as what?
Chaucer bringing the italians to england as what?
While... Poe aiming to short stories?
Geographically and politically America is bigger than Britain so it's more likely that its literature will have a larger scope.
Bigger scope refers to the themes and ambition of the novel. Grand national concepts like the American Dream don't exist in Britain. A concept like The Great American Novel wouldn't work in Britain.
The epic tradition has nothing to do with this greater scope. Milton being British has nothing to do with Paradise Lost.
If we're talking about British Literature, we talk about writers who have written great works and luckily for us are British. If we talk about American Literature, the nationality of the writer is prominent. American Literature has an identity, common themes. British Literature doesn't have this nationalism and so as a collective, its scope is smaller than that of American Literature.
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