I think it is somewhat weird that nobody put Twain in.
I could also see someone suggesting Hemingway, although I don't buy it.
Hart Crane at this point in time seems somewhat secondary, so that was surprising.
The Tracy Chapman thing seemed seriously like a troll, I could definitely agree to a black Homer, but then I guess it would be Langston Hughes or James Baldwin as my choices.
To suggest someone though who has the name recognition for American literature that Homer had for the Greeks, it would need to be Twain. You can't really have a great national writer that hardly anybody in the nation can name.
Twain is a good choice, but he also works against the mythology of America. His whole thing was popping bubbles and making grounded stories that work against the backdrop of Americana.
Tracy Chapman is a pretty trolly answer, but I suspect the real answer might very well be a musician or filmmaker, not a writer.
But this is about poetry, would Twain qualify as a poet?
My vote would go to Edgar Lee Masters because the spoon river anthology is one of the few poetry books I actually read, and it exemplifies a lot of the American spirit, IMVHO.
The vast majority of Cervantes's work was not in poetry, either. I think the idea is more "emblematic national storyteller" than poet in the narrow sense.
If you're going with songwriters grabbing epic snapshots of life, you're talking about songwriters in the class of Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, or Prince who wrote not just for themselves but others as well and were all pretty prolific in their output.
One aspect of Huckleberry Finn (the novel) that I think is relevant today is the spectacularly stupid zero-sum conflict between the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons. It seems relevant to the US's politics and many international conflicts
Definitely Twain and it's not even close. Huckleberry Finn even has the episodic flavor of The Odyssey.
For books you have "The Innocents Abroad", "Roughing It", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "A Tramp Abroad", "The Prince and the Pauper", "Life on the Mississippi", "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", and "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court".
That's a hell of a lineup and includes a LOT of the flavor of the US as a young country.
I don't see how it's not him, Whitman (the timing of his work is a strong point in his favor, being so concerned with the civil war and that apparently-neveaending struggle in America's metaphorical soul), or maybe Melville though I think he's the weakest of those three. Most other plausible answers are too late in the country's history to take that particular title, for one thing. Irving and Poe are early enough but I don't think either's even close to the combo of clout, staying-power, influence, quality, and breadth of coverage of, specifically, Americanness that one would expect for this (and I like both of them!).
I would agree with other posters that if we allow the search to stretch into the 20th century, odds are we'd end up with a filmmaker or songwriter, but I think we've got our all-around best options already, and they're all (basically) 19th century.
Diogenes of Sinope is maybe closer? He was sort of a living meme and there's a significant volume of apocryphal anecdotes of hijinks and pseudepigraphical writings, going on long after his death.
The most technically correct answer is Walt Whitman.
Longfellow got dismissed by several people here for being too sentimental - but I would argue that sentimentality and saccharine character is distinctly part of America's mythos.
Washington Irving and Parson Weems would both also be good candidates. Early writers who had a penchant for mixing real history with tall tales.
The name I would throw out is John Ford. Ford basically invented the modern action movie, the mythology of the West, redefined masculinity, established the tropes of a hero, etc.
Lots of excellent suggestions here. F. Scott Fitzgerald's missing so far - that's not necessarily who I'd choose but he belongs in the conversation. I don't think he's an especially interesting pick - Gatsby is cited as the Great American Novel as often as Moby Dick or Huck Finn - but he's a superlative writer who (like every high schooler in the country knows) explicitly and directly engaged with the meaning of America.
Reducing these countries to a single name is probably the reason why we can guess this was written by an american; each country has at least a bunch of inspired authors per couple of generations. The country it is actively being bombed right now is the "modern" reincarnation of a nation that is roughly 10x older than the US. We all know who american Homer is, and this is the first year ever we whish we was the president. Friggin noobs.
Stephen King. Homer was not great literature at the time he his works were written. He was popular entertainment with a dose of folk religion. I’m not sure Homer existed. 1000 years from now people will say the same of SK.
I can write a poem in my head without ever writing it down on paper. I still wrote a poem, even if I just pass it along orally.
If I write a song for my girl, I'm not going to hand her a piece of paper with sheet music and lyrics, I'm going to perform it for her. I may write it down, or I may not.
Of course, composed is a more precise word, but everyone still knows what I mean if I replace it with write.
You can take note. Writing is a physical action, e.g. performing output.
Writing is an action. You can memorize, take a mental note, but you are not writing.
(Someone else mentioned Camōes, a portuguese who famously/allegedly saved his writings from a shipwreck by swimming with one arm and using the other to keep the book above water; your interpretation of "writing" is an insult)
Good question. No. Since the press was invented, our records have improved tremendously, partially because of the low cost of maintaing them. However, we still have detailed records from many eras, tracing back at least 3000 years. The egyptians had archeologists, let that sink in.
We probably need more time to say for sure, but it might be David Chase. The Sopranos is partly an extended character study of someone who strives to fill American values as we imagine ourselves but also embodies American values as they actually exist.
The stories still passed down and translated into other languages two thousand years from now will be the answer. I think Sherman's memoirs could become something like the Iliad. They're surprisingly funny, engaging, and insightful, and Mark Twain (mentioned in this comment thread) had a hand in the memoirs IIRC.
Woody Guthrie, who gets a mention in the article, would get my vote.
I would argue that while poets and playwrights are a solid choice for ancient Greece, Music and Movies is the equivalent for America. Woody Guthrie is a solid choice because he traveled and collected folk music which was reflected in his own expressions.
As for movies I would want Jim Jarmusch to be Americas Homer, just because I like his movies a lot. But in reality I think the Coen Brothers are a more solid choice (aside from the fact that they have indeed adopted the Odyssey as an American folk story in Oh Brother Where Art Thou)
I would more consider him a Shakespeare of American Cinema rather then a Homer. Shakespeare was a prolific playwright (and a poet) who wrote plays about varied subjects and situations across the World of, some of his plays are of legendary status, and others not so great (same is true of Spielberg’s movies). Shakespeare’s plays (just like Spielberg) are also grounded in history and fiction rather then folk art and local legends and mythology. Also Spielberg is rather keen on adopting other people’s work to the big screen, which is a bit disqualifying* in this regard.
If you compare Jim Jarmusch who writes about epic road trips of regular people across the country, prisoners on the run from the law seeking the American dream, Vampires, Samurai hit-man in New York, then you start seeing how he reflects on American folk culture and mythology in his movies grounded in stories about American people (ditto Coen Brothers) much like Homer’s work on ancient Greek legends and myths grounded in stories about Greek society at the time.
What I am saying is that while Spielberg (just like Shakespeare) is a prolific director that has left us with many masterpieces (and other not-so-good pieces) he has not captured American legends, American mythology, nor American folk stories in ways Homer captured the Greek legends, mythology and folk stories. Both Jim Jarmusch and the Coen Brothers however have done so masterfully.
---
*: I know Woody Guthrie also played covers and collected folk music and redemption songs, but that is a bit different then adopting an already successful and widely known book into another format (ditto Homer).
If you are a 250 year old nation built on "stolen land" (by the europeans, mind you), I would assume not many. But the US has been home to many great writers. This is just stupid.
Some good takes so I hate to be glib but no one because 1. the US was founded long after the invention of writing and even the printing press plus 2. bronze age morality and worldview are completely alien to us in ways that no subculture in the US is.
The article references "England has Shakespeare (1600s), Spain has Certantes (1600s) Russia has Pushkin (1800s)" whom I assume are intended as their nations' versions.
You going to stand on your statement with that as a reference? We're closer to Pushkin than Pushkin was to Homer.
I cannot answer that and I think it will be years before, so I went with "Nobody Yet".
Tracy Chapman is an interesting pick, but I think she could be in the future. But I am surprised Thoreau was not in the list, at least from what I was able to read.
Since nobody seems to want to do it, I'll throw Kurk Vonnegut out. We're a satire of a nation and he's our greatest satirist (sorry Sam Clemmens, you're too earnest, even when telling a joke.)
English majors seem to have banded together to crown only the most inaccessible and politically charged authors as worthy of attention. If you like anyone else, you're just too inexperienced or partisan to appreciate real literature. To hell with them.
The answer is Brandon Sanderson who is freely sharing his knowledge of how to write with the world. His teachings will touch more in the coming years than any stodgy 1920s writer ever cared to.
Which of the proposed answers in the linked article would you characterize as one or both of "inaccessible" and "politically charged"?
I think a couple are bad answers (Wilder? She's fine-ish, but America's Homer? Very, very, no) but can't figure out which ones might be striking you that way.
>>English majors seem to have banded together to crown only the most inaccessible and politically charged authors as worthy of attention
Tell me you're an Engineer/don't hang out with actual "English Majors" (I'm 41, I don't spend much time on The Quad these days) without telling me as much.
Lit nerds love nothing more than fighting over the Canon (which, is the point of the article). To hell with banishing whole groups because you're lazy and stereotyping (this sentence is ironic considering the start of the paragraph...)
I think it is somewhat weird that nobody put Twain in.
I could also see someone suggesting Hemingway, although I don't buy it.
Hart Crane at this point in time seems somewhat secondary, so that was surprising.
The Tracy Chapman thing seemed seriously like a troll, I could definitely agree to a black Homer, but then I guess it would be Langston Hughes or James Baldwin as my choices.
To suggest someone though who has the name recognition for American literature that Homer had for the Greeks, it would need to be Twain. You can't really have a great national writer that hardly anybody in the nation can name.
Twain is a good choice, but he also works against the mythology of America. His whole thing was popping bubbles and making grounded stories that work against the backdrop of Americana.
Tracy Chapman is a pretty trolly answer, but I suspect the real answer might very well be a musician or filmmaker, not a writer.
But this is about poetry, would Twain qualify as a poet?
My vote would go to Edgar Lee Masters because the spoon river anthology is one of the few poetry books I actually read, and it exemplifies a lot of the American spirit, IMVHO.
The vast majority of Cervantes's work was not in poetry, either. I think the idea is more "emblematic national storyteller" than poet in the narrow sense.
Poe
Twain
If you're going with songwriters grabbing epic snapshots of life, you're talking about songwriters in the class of Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, or Prince who wrote not just for themselves but others as well and were all pretty prolific in their output.
Mark Twain is America's Homer
One aspect of Huckleberry Finn (the novel) that I think is relevant today is the spectacularly stupid zero-sum conflict between the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons. It seems relevant to the US's politics and many international conflicts
Definitely Twain and it's not even close. Huckleberry Finn even has the episodic flavor of The Odyssey.
For books you have "The Innocents Abroad", "Roughing It", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "A Tramp Abroad", "The Prince and the Pauper", "Life on the Mississippi", "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", and "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court".
That's a hell of a lineup and includes a LOT of the flavor of the US as a young country.
I don't see how it's not him, Whitman (the timing of his work is a strong point in his favor, being so concerned with the civil war and that apparently-neveaending struggle in America's metaphorical soul), or maybe Melville though I think he's the weakest of those three. Most other plausible answers are too late in the country's history to take that particular title, for one thing. Irving and Poe are early enough but I don't think either's even close to the combo of clout, staying-power, influence, quality, and breadth of coverage of, specifically, Americanness that one would expect for this (and I like both of them!).
I would agree with other posters that if we allow the search to stretch into the 20th century, odds are we'd end up with a filmmaker or songwriter, but I think we've got our all-around best options already, and they're all (basically) 19th century.
Unfortunately that title is already reserved in the US for Homer Simpson.
Ergo, Matt Groening.
I suppose that begs the question, who was ancient Greece's Homer Simpson?
Socrates, I'd say.
Diogenes of Sinope is maybe closer? He was sort of a living meme and there's a significant volume of apocryphal anecdotes of hijinks and pseudepigraphical writings, going on long after his death.
Nooo...it has to be Margites from Homer's Margites :)
The most technically correct answer is Walt Whitman.
Longfellow got dismissed by several people here for being too sentimental - but I would argue that sentimentality and saccharine character is distinctly part of America's mythos.
Washington Irving and Parson Weems would both also be good candidates. Early writers who had a penchant for mixing real history with tall tales.
The name I would throw out is John Ford. Ford basically invented the modern action movie, the mythology of the West, redefined masculinity, established the tropes of a hero, etc.
> The most technically correct answer is Walt Whitman
why?
Lots of excellent suggestions here. F. Scott Fitzgerald's missing so far - that's not necessarily who I'd choose but he belongs in the conversation. I don't think he's an especially interesting pick - Gatsby is cited as the Great American Novel as often as Moby Dick or Huck Finn - but he's a superlative writer who (like every high schooler in the country knows) explicitly and directly engaged with the meaning of America.
Reducing these countries to a single name is probably the reason why we can guess this was written by an american; each country has at least a bunch of inspired authors per couple of generations. The country it is actively being bombed right now is the "modern" reincarnation of a nation that is roughly 10x older than the US. We all know who american Homer is, and this is the first year ever we whish we was the president. Friggin noobs.
To be clear, there are excellent american authors, and many comments mention them; its more of a "why am I reading stupid questions about history?"
Stephen King. Homer was not great literature at the time he his works were written. He was popular entertainment with a dose of folk religion. I’m not sure Homer existed. 1000 years from now people will say the same of SK.
"Homer was not great literature at the time he his works were written".
They were not written at all. No written literature existed in the time of Homer.
I can write a poem in my head without ever writing it down on paper. I still wrote a poem, even if I just pass it along orally.
If I write a song for my girl, I'm not going to hand her a piece of paper with sheet music and lyrics, I'm going to perform it for her. I may write it down, or I may not.
Of course, composed is a more precise word, but everyone still knows what I mean if I replace it with write.
You can take note. Writing is a physical action, e.g. performing output.
Writing is an action. You can memorize, take a mental note, but you are not writing.
(Someone else mentioned Camōes, a portuguese who famously/allegedly saved his writings from a shipwreck by swimming with one arm and using the other to keep the book above water; your interpretation of "writing" is an insult)
> I can write a poem in my head without ever writing it down on paper. I still wrote a poem, even if I just pass it along orally
This is generalising the term writing to the point of uselessness. In your example, you thought of a poem and spoke it. You didn't write it.
Are you also calling it literature if it's not written down?
How long after were these put down as writings ?
...you think 1000 years from now people will wonder whether or not Stephen King existed?
Good question. No. Since the press was invented, our records have improved tremendously, partially because of the low cost of maintaing them. However, we still have detailed records from many eras, tracing back at least 3000 years. The egyptians had archeologists, let that sink in.
Some fun trivia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ea-n%C4%81%E1%B9%A3ir
We probably need more time to say for sure, but it might be David Chase. The Sopranos is partly an extended character study of someone who strives to fill American values as we imagine ourselves but also embodies American values as they actually exist.
> Do we have a great poet who captures the American spirit, the American story, the American identity?
Dare I suggest Bob Dylan?
Odd to include Chapman and not Dylan. Much like leaving out Twain - seems like the defacto choice to me.
maggots festering upon a corpse have very little to do with its spirit, story, or identity.
The stories still passed down and translated into other languages two thousand years from now will be the answer. I think Sherman's memoirs could become something like the Iliad. They're surprisingly funny, engaging, and insightful, and Mark Twain (mentioned in this comment thread) had a hand in the memoirs IIRC.
Lotta obvious answers left off because this seems to be about poets specifically.
laughs in Melville
Solid read.
Recommendations elaborated on in the article are a solid set. Mark Twain or Walt Whitman would probably get my vote.
Woody Guthrie, who gets a mention in the article, would get my vote.
I would argue that while poets and playwrights are a solid choice for ancient Greece, Music and Movies is the equivalent for America. Woody Guthrie is a solid choice because he traveled and collected folk music which was reflected in his own expressions.
As for movies I would want Jim Jarmusch to be Americas Homer, just because I like his movies a lot. But in reality I think the Coen Brothers are a more solid choice (aside from the fact that they have indeed adopted the Odyssey as an American folk story in Oh Brother Where Art Thou)
Steven Spielberg is probably the Homer of American cinema.
I would more consider him a Shakespeare of American Cinema rather then a Homer. Shakespeare was a prolific playwright (and a poet) who wrote plays about varied subjects and situations across the World of, some of his plays are of legendary status, and others not so great (same is true of Spielberg’s movies). Shakespeare’s plays (just like Spielberg) are also grounded in history and fiction rather then folk art and local legends and mythology. Also Spielberg is rather keen on adopting other people’s work to the big screen, which is a bit disqualifying* in this regard.
If you compare Jim Jarmusch who writes about epic road trips of regular people across the country, prisoners on the run from the law seeking the American dream, Vampires, Samurai hit-man in New York, then you start seeing how he reflects on American folk culture and mythology in his movies grounded in stories about American people (ditto Coen Brothers) much like Homer’s work on ancient Greek legends and myths grounded in stories about Greek society at the time.
What I am saying is that while Spielberg (just like Shakespeare) is a prolific director that has left us with many masterpieces (and other not-so-good pieces) he has not captured American legends, American mythology, nor American folk stories in ways Homer captured the Greek legends, mythology and folk stories. Both Jim Jarmusch and the Coen Brothers however have done so masterfully.
---
*: I know Woody Guthrie also played covers and collected folk music and redemption songs, but that is a bit different then adopting an already successful and widely known book into another format (ditto Homer).
No Mark Twain?
From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us.
this is not super productive, but not including “Germany has Goethe” in the opening line turned me off immediately
And France has Molière, and Portugal has Camões...how many authors should be listed?
If you are a 250 year old nation built on "stolen land" (by the europeans, mind you), I would assume not many. But the US has been home to many great writers. This is just stupid.
Some good takes so I hate to be glib but no one because 1. the US was founded long after the invention of writing and even the printing press plus 2. bronze age morality and worldview are completely alien to us in ways that no subculture in the US is.
The article references "England has Shakespeare (1600s), Spain has Certantes (1600s) Russia has Pushkin (1800s)" whom I assume are intended as their nations' versions.
You going to stand on your statement with that as a reference? We're closer to Pushkin than Pushkin was to Homer.
Heh, we're closer to the Beowulf poet than the Beowulf poet was to Homer.
How about Cormac McCarthy?
I'd go with Ogden Nash as the most American "American" poet. He's my horse in the race.
I cannot answer that and I think it will be years before, so I went with "Nobody Yet".
Tracy Chapman is an interesting pick, but I think she could be in the future. But I am surprised Thoreau was not in the list, at least from what I was able to read.
Since nobody seems to want to do it, I'll throw Kurk Vonnegut out. We're a satire of a nation and he's our greatest satirist (sorry Sam Clemmens, you're too earnest, even when telling a joke.)
Mark Twain
Outis.
isn't it obviously steinbeck?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_of_Eden_(novel)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grapes_of_Wrath (one of the best books i've ever read)
English majors seem to have banded together to crown only the most inaccessible and politically charged authors as worthy of attention. If you like anyone else, you're just too inexperienced or partisan to appreciate real literature. To hell with them.
The answer is Brandon Sanderson who is freely sharing his knowledge of how to write with the world. His teachings will touch more in the coming years than any stodgy 1920s writer ever cared to.
As much as I love just about everything about Sando, he doesn’t hold a candle to Mark Twain.
I think this is a recency bias in effect.
But damn, Sanderson writes some great stories.
Someone else brought up Spielberg and I think a pretty good argument could be made there. But Twain has already stood the test of time.
What on earth is "politically charged" or "inaccessible" about Frost or Ingalls Wilder? It's not like they threw in Gertrude Stein or William Gaddis.
Which of the proposed answers in the linked article would you characterize as one or both of "inaccessible" and "politically charged"?
I think a couple are bad answers (Wilder? She's fine-ish, but America's Homer? Very, very, no) but can't figure out which ones might be striking you that way.
>>English majors seem to have banded together to crown only the most inaccessible and politically charged authors as worthy of attention
Tell me you're an Engineer/don't hang out with actual "English Majors" (I'm 41, I don't spend much time on The Quad these days) without telling me as much.
Lit nerds love nothing more than fighting over the Canon (which, is the point of the article). To hell with banishing whole groups because you're lazy and stereotyping (this sentence is ironic considering the start of the paragraph...)
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