Spurious is talking about some kinds of writing, notably the vastness of the page/canvas in American arts... well said, but that was a time that changed, that seems to have faded.
I remember being startled, when I spent a year in Germany in 1993, at the sheer crowdedness of the country: at the endless neat sub-cities and semi-cities that dominated the spaces between anything important enough to have its own dot on the map. Realized on train trips, and a closer examination of maps: the entire country, and in fact large parts of Europe, were even more crowded than the areas where I grew up and later lived – Greater Metropolitan Areas, as they are loosely called. Not just the vastness of the five boroughs of New York that continue into the endless small cities of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York State and others, but even more the peculiarly repetitive suburbs of Washington, D.C., which spread through several states, and which seem almost entirely inescapable: wherever you go you have the feeling you've been to that street before, but it's just that it closely resembles a hundred others. They say that the conurbation of the East Coast now reaches practically from Atlanta to New York....
And California: there was once a sense of pockets of countryside in between stretches of small cities (at least in California, some of those cities are a bit more differentiated; some of them even have character, though a very relaxed and non-historical character). Most of that space has vanished, but luckily when you go inland the vast stretches of farmland in the central valley relieve the eye with space.
But an era when the page seemed vast, when thought could take freely to the sky, untrammelled by European traditions and a mass of other writings that occupied the same space: that feels as though it's over. Thomas Wolfe is replaced by Thomas Pynchon – books that are still long, but now cluttered with stuff that's already there, like crowded attics. I loved Wallace's Broom of the System (although I've bought his later books I haven't gotten around to them); but it is cluttered in the same manic way – a world that is simply full of stuff.
When I teach my contemporary music courses, I draw sharp contrasts between the Europeans and the Americans: the Europeans are deeply and unavoidably caught up in tradition, the Americans have a blank slate. That may have been true from the 1920s to the 1970s or so; but the blankness of our slate seems to have gotten rather crowded – music does appear to be at the end of an era rather than its beginning, and for about twenty years or so we have all tended to rehash and recycle ideas and styles, mixing them up in the hope that something will interest the listener. And books: although it does seem that, even in the bookstores of American airports, a higher class of writing is expected than formerly; but they all seem products from the same factories, they all seem to talk about each other in a rather claustrophobic way. They all seem sensitive, agreed – but as though their sensitivity is on display, as though they are competing for a prize in delicately felt artistry.
I was never all that enamoured of the wide-open spaces: they were always associated with a macho esthetic, with Guys And Their Stuff. Road trips, motorcycles, the open road: cowboys need space and emotional distance, the West is for the rough'n'tough. [Hmm, I think I just figured out the 'hook' for the paper I was supposed to write over the past month – must remember to go wrap my thoughts around this conflict.]
Which is why I loved San Francisco – taking advantage of the spaces, of the newness, of the distance from the cultural centers of Europe and the northeast, but in a complicated urban kind of way. But certainly anyone acquainted with a century of California literature can see the changes – they are practically critical truisms now, at least in America: that northern California literature went from a free-and-clean rebelliousness to one that seemed all indoors, even one that takes place inside computer monitors; and southern Californian went from the rambunctious and rapid changes of the early days to a world of structure hierarchies, of agencies and benefits and a truly, finally interconnected Industry.
It's all sort of Spenglerian: I always liked ideas of Zeitgeists, of finding the 'spirit' or general tone of an age, a place and time. It's considered historically very suspect; but for me it's just a plausible extension of social construction – if people do indeed collect their ideas from the ideas of others, then why, especially in eras of generally broadcast ideas and images, can't you assume that everyone is following a related group of patterns?
End of an age: late Roman empire: static not moving: repetition, repetition, repetition.
And a culture of suburbs....
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