Melville is the only author we've produced in our entire history who can even stand up to the middle-weight talents of Europe. Maybe Faulkner.
My theory is that it's because all American lit is grounded in realism - it infects even our most out-there writers, Pynchon, say. It's like everything has to have this sort of aw-shucks veneer, with 'realistic' dialogue and recognizable characters and situations - our literature basically hasn't left the Victorian era. The only people I can think of that really break this mold are experimentalists like Barth, Barthelme, and Marcus, but (in my opinion) they're equally shit because all they do is play with form at the expense of content.
Where is the American equivalent to Beckett, Roussel, Kafka, Borges, O'Brien, etc. ?
American lit is so based that we basically fucked every other country so hard they can't wear a pair of briefs without getting skid marks in them. Foreign literary movements cannot remove the stain of our rape. Ever.
Good lit is based in ancient tradition. New worlders lack this, and therefore, there are no good new world authors. Don't fret, though. Made up nations like Ukraine, Macedonia, and so on lack good authors for the same reason.
Cameron Murphy
>Melville is the only author we've produced in our entire history who can even stand up to the middle-weight talents of Europe >Hemingway >Fitzgerald >Poe >Steinbeck >Dean Koontz Stfu you fucking euroworshipping cuckboi
Logan Nguyen
Lovecraft too. Eat my burger-flavored shit OP.
Zachary Price
Op you're correct
Kevin Miller
same for music, all your composers sound like shitty rodeo bells
and painting as well
oh yeah your films suck compared to European masters
America is a cultureless place. As pointed out, the greatest American intelligentsia is roughly on the same level as the European middle class. In every the worst European cities, you can see the lowest classes reading and discussing literature at cafes. In America, the cultural juggernauts such as Kanye West brag about refusing to read things. It probably has to do with the fact that America is a country founded by the worst of the worst from various societies: zealots, criminals, and other exiled wastes from Europe, the Africans who could not escape slavery, and the Asians and Hispanics too weak to cut it out in their ancestral homelands. Contrast with Canada, which did not throw away its right to European culture and tradition by engaging in a traitorous insurgency over legitimate taxation and then throwing a civil war less than a century later over whether the slaves they imported were human.
Luis Baker
Is Twain not liked on here?
Noah Kelly
>Contrast with Canada Um, what? What is some significant cultural production from Canada? Serious question. Am I missing out on some goodies here?
Cooper Lopez
>In every the worst European cities, you can see the lowest classes reading and discussing literature at cafes epic b8 m8 i r8 8/8
Alexander Myers
Half the notable people that Americans claim are American are actually Canadians. Another quarter were born somewhere else outside of American soil but later moved there. Such as Nabokov, Einstein, Stravinsky..
Benjamin Edwards
America is a young country and for the first few hundred years all people were focusing on was building infrastructure and economy. It takes generations of people developing artistic subcultures to create great art. By the time these were getting under way western art in general underwent a total collapse of form so there was only a tiny window for a few people to contribute.
That being said Moby Dick is astonishing and easily in the highest tier of novels
Thomas Hughes
>your films suck compared to European masters HA!
Carter Morales
Ikr, I had no idea that 60 IQ Somalians and Pakis had such respect for western literature as to discuss it regularly in cafes and kebab stores.
Evan Perez
The erou fetishizing on this board really makes no sense if you consider 2/3rds of the meme trilogy is American. Then again we’ve all turned on Cormac as well
Henry James is European literature. Doesn't matter that he is from the US. His whole oeuvre revolves around Europeans being superior to American plebs.
Benjamin Moore
>My theory is that it's because all American lit is grounded in realism
my theory is that ur a fagot
David Gomez
The people who made those undoubtedly had longstanding traditions that informed their art. Some of the neolithic cave paintings show similarity in style extending for thousands of years
Dylan Adams
Then we get Nabokov unironically and forever
Hunter Bennett
>Then again we’ve all turned on Cormac as well It's an absolute crock of shit. How many still living European authors can compete with Corncob? >Inb4 "J.K.ROWLING, burger!" Fuck you fags.
John Young
I know y’all don’t like sci-fi, but half of the good stuff was written by Americans. Dan Simmons, Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, William Gibson, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, etc. etc.
Gabriel Hill
Yeah, and it was beautiful all the way back. If America had no art, at this juncture, then maybe it would have a chance of producing good art in the future. The problem is that America does have art. And it's trash. America has already started on the wrong foot, correcting the mistake will probably be too difficult to be feasible.
Melville was a citizen of the world. He had seen about all there was to see in his time thanks to his constant voyaging. In contrast, most Americans have a very close minded outlook. Most Americans do not go overseas, or even to Mexico or Canada, or even outside the region they were born in.
Jason Miller
kinda true actually, was odded out in america the lack of meet ups discussing Joyce
Benjamin Russell
South America has good literature. The only hope for the US is if it gets taken over almost entirely by it's Spanish speaking population, and the official language is changed to Spanish. Then you would have a majority of plebian squat Indian population, but a minority enclave of elite light skin Spanish speaking intellectuals who would be connected through language and partly through culture with the Spanish language cultural traditions of the rest of the Americas and even Spain to an extant. That's basically the only way to salvage American culture and stave off the growing cultural negroidization of the US.
Dylan White
American upper class has a huge chip on its shoulder and constantly sucks European dick because it'll impress their rich friends more. American lower classes think art is a waste of time. Americans really don't care about local artists at all beyond the middle class niche that's into crime stories, horror, fantasy, and other bland young adult stuff. There's a sizable amount of American musicians and writers that had to move to Europe because the quirkiness of their art wasn't appreciated.
Jackson Green
>It's bad because it's not European and has influence from brown people Yea Forums once again proving to be sheltered Euro and wannabe Euro pseuds who are afraid of different perspectives of reality
Ayden Murphy
bump
Charles Anderson
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