Thursday, January 21, 2016

Hmm …

… Meaning in America | TLS. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Americans have never had much of a shared literary culture.
Really? Maybe not now, but not ever? I think there was something of an American literary culture when I was growing up. My father, a policeman, was quite familiar with Sinclair Lewis and other authors of his time.

Fender argues that the Great American Speech “runs directly counter to the ‘American Dream’”. That loose association of ideas and ideals holds that if you work hard to better yourself and play by the rules, you’ll eventually succeed.
Well, he argues from ignorance. The American Dream has a quite specific origin and a quite specific definition. The phrase was coined by historian James Truslow Adams in 1931 in The Epic of America. He describes it as "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."
It has little to do with getting and spending. Apparently it also difficult for those preoccupied with speechifying to interpret.

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