--- joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
"First the U.S. is a very young culture historically; second, the second half ot he 20th century is a period of decline. No shoulders to stand on."
Interesting comments. Not sure about the young culture/old culture thesis. Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes came at the beginning of their cultures; the first two stood on the shoulders of Greek and Latin writers. But maybe you mean America is young historically, it's main cultural myths (freedom, mobility, frontier, self-government, etc.) negated and superceded by empire.
The writer of *Cold Mountain* is an interesting case: his first novel an inspiring narrative of survival and redemption (and rejection of violence); his latest about a father and son wondering around in a post-apocalyptic wilderness. Where can a writer go from there?
Still, Edward P. Jones' *The Known World" (about a freed slave who becomes a slave owner) is one of the best and most original novels I've read in years. Writers whose roots are not in the mainstream culture may still have a lot to say.
BobW
> (Chuck Grimes) wrote:
>
> >I agree, but that whole generation of American
> writers were like
> >that. Early promise, too much alcohol and
> socializing, and not enough
> >work, especially the hard work of revising to the
> point of throwing it
> >out. Most of the them didn't grow. One good early
> shot and that was
> >it. Part of it was the way their sensibility
> bounced off their own
> >formative period, which was usually irreverent,
> comic, and serious all
> >at once, a conflict of youth that didn't age or
> transform into
> >something else, something or some direction that
> should have been
> >unexpected, much finer and more comprehensive.
> >
> Talent can only take you so far -- you actually do
> need a sustaining
> culture. I think Bernini had as much raw talent and
> worked as hard as
> Donatello; but Donatello came along in the high
> Middle Ages and Bernini,
> during a much coarser period.
>
> There have been many hugely talented and promising
> American writers that
> could ultimately not deliver: Fitzgerald, Bellow...
> Mailer is the least
> of them. I read "Adventures of Augie March" last
> year and was blown away
> by Bellow's raw talent, but take it all in all,
> "March" is a picaresque
> novel that goes nowhere.
>
> The culture is the soil without which great things
> can't happen. It
> cannot be mere happenstance that Shakespeare comes
> along during the
> English renaissance; that Mozart and Bach rode on
> the coattails of many
> generations of musicians; that India has someone of
> the stature or RK
> Narayan, but the U.S. does not. First the U.S. is a
> very young culture
> historically; second, the second half ot he 20th
> century is a period of
> decline. No shoulders to stand on. And it has never
> been a culture that
> prized maturity.
>
> Joanna
>
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>