What I think of when I hear “American Literature” is an old park during and after a lightning storm. Mind you this park is incredibly borning. It’s a place where you have a picnic, not a park where you hold a concert. It’s nice. It’s just nice. It is nice on the verge of boring– then comes the tunderstorm. Now, after the the tunderstorm, some branches have fallen off the trees and some other random damage, that I cannot think of right now, has happened. Now the people of the town who like the park, start to think.
“Maybe this thunderstorm was not a bad thing to happen to this park. These old benches and streetlights aren’t really what we’re about. Let’s fix up the park and more importantly make it exciting and relevant for everyone.”
Ok, so relevant isn’t really a word that applies to a park, but you get the metaphor. American literature, from what I understand, was stuck way in the past. The idea of old dead rich white guys may sound reactionary, but it really is what the majority of what is considered important to read.
So while we know that American literature isn’t just American-born writers imitating Anglo-Saxon/European style, then what is it? Maybe it is our Eurpean influences. However, then it should also be the Asian, Latino, African, Native American, Arabic, Indian, Oceanic and even Nordic influences. It should be whatever America is. America is a lot of things, so I really don’t think American literature should be one thing forever. American literature should always be relevant, it should be a living, breating thing that should never die.
When I hear about American Literature I think about a ton of the books I have read. Great Books such as the Great Gatsby show the area of the swinging twenties it was time when sex, love, murder, and partying were at a high point. I think about Night which is a novel about a young boy who lived through the holocaust. He experienced the torture physically and mentally of the concentration camps. All though this novel is not set in America many times it is classified as American literature because the author wrote it after he came to the states. There are many more books that I can name but that would go on for ever.
The title American Literature is familiar to me. However loosely defined we can describe it as literature written in America. As I have grown I’ve learned that there is more to it than that. To understand American Literature you can not just read a book and leave it at that. You need to read about the authors. Then you can move on to the text. While reading, you can not just skim the material. You need be engaged and have a dialogue with the text. Also when trying to understand American literature we need to realize that not everyone will agree on what books should be included on the American Literature Canon.
To me American Literature only makes sense when it is set in America or the writer writes the work while staying here. Usually works of American Literature have to do with big subjects that America has seen and dealt with such as racism, sex, murder, drugs, scandals, money and so on and so forth. We relate to all these works in some way or can identify with them.
I think you have the most creative way of bringing your point across that I ever heard. I also agree. It would be nice if we had more diversity in the canon of American Literature. We could spice it up so much. No one wants to hear the same old boring stories from the same old boring perspective.
I got cut off. anyway.
Dont you think it would be cool if in books like Gatsby the main character was a woman and it was a black woman and a Asian guy for instance. If there was some culture added the books would be totally different. It would make it all the more powerful. Great job Alex.
I definatly agree with how you view literature. In fact my blog is somewhat similar, so similar its creepy. You have a very good imagination and the metaphor is great. I think you are right that diversity is needed and that American Literature does not encompass many other influences. Well put!!!
I agree. So much of American Literature is the same thing over and over again, that you feel like you’re reading the same thing over and over again.