American literature's influence, or lack of, globally…
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American literature's influence, or lack of, globally?
This is more a question for non-U.S. people, but if you have some special insight, feel free to share!
So, the question is: To what degree is classic American literature considered, on the global scale, classic?
Works from many places, of course, reach *far, far, far* beyond their place of origin. See: *One Hundred Years of Solitude*, *The Waste-Land*, and countless others. I assume some American works have pretty global reach (*Moby Dick* and Faulkner come to mind), but surely there is a degree to which American literature is native. For example, Walt Whitman is a household name in the States, and most any school-kid is made to read him at one time or another. If you said "Whitman" in, for example, England, would there be that immediate association to Walt Whitman? Or say, the same for Dickinson, or Hawthorne, or *Uncle Tom's Cabin*,... etc., etc.!
I think there is a general assumption that Americans think that their culture is widely known, or otherwise the status quo. To give us some credit, the United States is an incredibly varied country (not to say more varied than others), and this does extend to literature. Even within the U.S., it can be a sort of regional thing. Eudora Welty, for example, is an author I'm sure is much more popular in the Southern states than anywhere else. As an American, it can be really hard to gauge like ... if what is popular here is popular anywhere else, because one can spend their entire life--very easily--without ever having visited another country, or even having left the few states around them.
Let me know!
#entertainment
This is more a question for non-U.S. people, but if you have some special insight, feel free to share!
So, the question is: To what degree is classic American literature considered, on the global scale, classic?
Works from many places, of course, reach *far, far, far* beyond their place of origin. See: *One Hundred Years of Solitude*, *The Waste-Land*, and countless others. I assume some American works have pretty global reach (*Moby Dick* and Faulkner come to mind), but surely there is a degree to which American literature is native. For example, Walt Whitman is a household name in the States, and most any school-kid is made to read him at one time or another. If you said "Whitman" in, for example, England, would there be that immediate association to Walt Whitman? Or say, the same for Dickinson, or Hawthorne, or *Uncle Tom's Cabin*,... etc., etc.!
I think there is a general assumption that Americans think that their culture is widely known, or otherwise the status quo. To give us some credit, the United States is an incredibly varied country (not to say more varied than others), and this does extend to literature. Even within the U.S., it can be a sort of regional thing. Eudora Welty, for example, is an author I'm sure is much more popular in the Southern states than anywhere else. As an American, it can be really hard to gauge like ... if what is popular here is popular anywhere else, because one can spend their entire life--very easily--without ever having visited another country, or even having left the few states around them.
Let me know!
#entertainment
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