[PREV - LOST_AESTHETE] [TOP]
August 4, 2002
December 29, 2005
Rev: May 4, 2019
Rev: July 15, 2025
If you ask me, there's a dirty
little secret about the
American Novel: it sucks. Though American Literature
had it's strong points in
the 1800s:
Or rather: it *did* suck Edgar Allen Poe
up until around 1920. Walt Whitman
GLASS_KEY
Most of the things that get
promoted as being the Great
American Novel just aren't (But what about
all that good: "Pilgrim's Progress"?)
"Huckleberry Finn"
HAWKING_FINN
"Moby Dick"
MOBY_DICK
But you had American folks pushing it
out of nationalistic pride, and you
had European folks who bought into it
because they had this weird respect Like selling gangsta rap
for the noble savage produced by the to suburban white kids.
American wilderness.
How else to
explain the "As for tomorrow, I
And once something is popularity of don't know if this
established as part of Fenimore Cooper whim of mine will
the cannon, it never in Europe? last; but this
really leaves. After evening the anemic
all, it's really hard pallor of our
to judge whether civilization, as
something is "Good" monotonous as a
even if you directly railway line, makes
share the same RISK my stomach heave
cultural background, with disgust.
when it's a product of I find myself
something written a responding with
century ago, it's hard passion to the
to say what kind of horrors of the
critical standards retreat from Moscow,
should apply to it. the excitement of
_The Red Rover_ and
the life of a
If it expresses an smuggler."
attitude that seems -- A character in
out of date, then Balzac's "The Wild
it's historical, if Ass's Skin"
it expresses an BALZAC
attitude that seems
up to date, then *Excitement*?
it's amazingly
ahead of it's time. Try reading
some Cooper
sometime.
I'm in full
And if the writing agreement
seems really clumsy, with Twain
well, standards were on that one.
different back then.
You have to appreciate
it in it's context. HAWKING_FINN
My take on Twain would
be that for a writer, Though of course,
he was pretty good at I haven't read
stand-up comedy. Twain's entire I never did get to
output... reading "Conneticut
Yankee", for example.
SECURING_RIGHTS
"TZETZE (or TSETSE) FLY, n. An African insect (_Glossina morsitans_)
whose bite is commonly regarded as nature's most efficacious remedy
for insomnia, though some patients prefer that of the American
novelist (_Mendax interminabilis_)."
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" (1910)
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