(Steve's words=serif; mine=sans-serif):
Do you think studying American lit is a way to understand America, Americans, and its/their place in the world historically, today, and in the future?
1. Yes. I do. When you read American literature, you can ask questions like the following: What is America? Where did it come from? Who are Americans? Who isn’t? How does one become an American? What does it mean to become an American? What is America’s role in the World? What purpose does it serve? You can study American history, laws, art, artists, musicians, geography, philosophy, economics, political structure, etc. and ask the same questions…Nations as means of organizing people and thought and resources may be losing ground, but nation-states are not irrelevant in the world.
Take it away, Ned Beatty's character from Network (1976):
Understanding the way Americans see themselves, the world, their place in the world, could help one understand why Americans do what they do. If America is wrecking havoc in the world, it may have something to do with their world view, and to stop wrecking havoc may require a shift in worldview…to shift something, one must know what it is…
Amen. But I've been wondering lately whether one's own bellybutton is the best focal point through which to affect a shift in worldview. I've always thought so, at least ever since I read Allen Ginsberg's "America" (1956).
3. Would you say that America has a significant impact on the lives of many people the world over, for good or ill, and ultimately, people's lives could be better or worse based on the Actions/attitudes of America/Americans and studying them might reveal the good/evil that can befall the world? (this one loses structural integrity, but i'm too tired to clean it up)
Yes. The world could be a better place, not because of American Literature, but because studying American Literature, we might find out why America does what it does, and that might give us a clue as to how to redirect the nation’s energies. Like therapy for a nation. Who are we as a people? What do we value? What should we value? America’s attitudes toward central and south American, Europe, Africa, Asia, Catholicism, Buddhism, Islam, Communism, etc.…We might better understand it through the study of American Literature. We might suggest alternatives.
Remember when we went to that Springsteen concert in 2000? We ate at Tanner's on Broadway and someone (it may have been you) ordered an "American Dog" hotdog and I said, "What makes it an American dog? Was it raised on promises?" When Sara and I started dating, I told her that story (as proof of my quick wit). No reaction. I told her I was riffing on lyrics from the Tom Petty song, "American Girl." Nothing. I played her the song. She shrugged. She said the problem with me and Tom Petty is that it never occurred to either of us that she, too, is an American girl.
Here’s another question…What about the study of American Literature pleases you? What aspects of studying Am. Lit. give you pleasure?
I'm going to resist the urge to say that pleasure is overrated, to mention the time my mom said she just wanted me to be happy and I said I'll settle for useful. Instead, I'll say that I'm not sure but that I never slept properly on Tuesday nights, after my Studies in the American Novel course let out at 8:40 PM. I'll say that I feel an absolute urgency to talk about whether U.S. fiction will continue to matter in the 21st century, about if anybody cares that no Pulitzer Prize for fiction was awarded in 2012. I'll say that those conversations I had on Tuesday nights sustained me, even if they also made that alarm bell of anxiety all the louder.
2. If Am Lit Courses were to go away, what would you replace it with? World Literature? American Studies?
"Literature of the Americas" has a nice ring. Such a rubric might also push me to actually, finally learn Spanish.
3. What does this mean? “This trend of insularity ends the minute American soil gets delocalized, the minute we dig for worms and find instead the cords of camaraderie.”
I don't know. That's why I pasted in that trailer to the documentary Vivan las Antipodes! That's how blog writing works. When you can't explain, deflect. I think I was trying to make some metaphor about global networks, about uncommon ties to what's not American.
I've been failing to make that metaphor for years now.
