American Morality
Posted on April 24, 2007
Filed Under For Argument's Sake |
I was picking through the new Granta list of young American novelists having got there by way of US aggregator site netscape, creators of my first favourite browser (I also did a stint as an Open Directory editor because I believed in what netscape was). This line from the Guardian coverage caught my eye.
“Several of the Granta judges pointed to a new outward-looking focus among the younger generation of American novelists, towards the wider world beyond America’s borders, or what Edmund White dubbed the “Peace Corps novel”.”
This patronising piece of upper-class Englishness deserves a little picking apart. I just finished writing a little piece about US dominance of the global movies’ market and was surprised to find it was ever thus - right back to the 1920s. Movies are American, more or less. They’ve been a global industry since their early days. America’s chosen mode of expression has always integrated diverse viewpoints. Only there could Chaplin flourish. The fact that we want to watch the blockbusters is our fault.
In economics affairs the handful of people who talk publicly about the importance of ethics in the start-up world, are American. Last summer I talked with Craig Newmark for a while and was knocked over by his moral approach to money making - I have enough, there’s only so much you can spend….do right by others. The world of blogging, global, is held together by an American ethos. Who leads the creative commons and i-commons movements? They seem to be American too.
So is it just novelists who haven’t looked beyond their borders or are we unnecssarily down on American culture, to the point of affecting a donnish condescension when an American intellectual adopts an outward looking focus?
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3 Responses to “American Morality”
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There is a literary movement of Peace Corps Writers and I have been tracking (as well as publishing) writings by award winning writers who served over the past 40+ years of the Peace Corps.
Check out: www.peacecorpswriters.org.
John Coyne
Editor
Not quite sure what your comment means John. I thought the Guardianreference was a little condescending - you don’t?
We’ve all embraced American culture in every conceivable way, and it has enriched us. However, the essential decency of many Americans has a crass alter-ego, and this is what Europeans react against.
I don’t think you can be absolute in either direction. America has dominated the world culturally and militarily, and sometimes that has been to the good, but it has also been to our detriment.
Likewise, I hate the homogenising influence of the mid-Atlantic culture on our country. How long will it be before regional traditions, languages and even accents are eradicated?