What's the national epic of America?
>>25412326Moby-Dick
probably some really memable super bowl commercial, with a catchy jingle>mobly cockno diabetes danny even knows what that is
>>25412326The mythicisation of WW2 in various films and tv shows. Which actually includes some MCU movies now that I think about it>>25412343It fits as one of their “great works of literature” but I don’t think it’s popular enough today to >>25412348Le epic supreme gentleman Redditor who’s so above the normalfags deign to speak.Most ordinary people barely read at all. Yet Moby-Dick is actually pretty culturally ingrained in western society even if it’s secondhand
>>25412326
A Song of Ice and Fire and The Dark Tower unironically
>>25412371Both of those authors suck but if we're going to pretend it's a King novel then it would be The Stand.
>>25412376The Stand is just people dying of a cough for 1000 pages
>>25412377That's the extended version though like I said King is garbage. The Stand is an epic if nothing else.
>all of these novelsan epic needs to be in verse
>>25412392a novel is just a verse with prose
>>25412326Blood Meridian
>>25412392Well, as someone said Moby-Dick, let’s say Clarel>>25412409Actually a good choice, it’s good but popular and fits into a genre that’s fundamental to the American spirit
Blood Meridian is reddit and not American
>>25412424>it’s RedditAnything that’s popular and accessible like that is Reddit>it’s not American>written by an American, set in America, about a central part of American historyWhat are you talking about? Pic related?
>>25412424Also Reddit is peak Americanisation of the internet.
>>25412444>written by an American, set in America, about a central part of American historyso is Uncle Tom's Cabin
>>25412424yanks really overrated McCarthy for some reason, even Stephen King is more respected in Europe
>>25412454How is that not American as well? It doesn’t need to be good to be American>>25412467>yanks really overrated McCarthy for some reasonIt’s because he’s a lot easier to read and accessible than a lot of other writers from his era and before, can you imagine the average fans of Mccarthy trying to read something as long as Gravity’s Rainbow? plus Americans really like the kind of things he writes about.>even Stephen King is more respected in EuropeOk now, let’s not be delusional. He’s more popular, nobody here actually respects him.
>>25412476>plus Americans really like the kind of things he writes about.Pointless violence in purple prose?
>>25412476I've read both Blood Meridian and Gravity's Rainbow
>>25412503yes
>>25412528Well done anon, but I’m sure most of us have. I’m referring to the people who lionise BM and McCarthy who aren’t really that into literature otherwise
obviously walt whitman's leaves of grass.
>>25412326It's obviously To Kill a Mockingbird. That book is a great representation of how all facets of American society is fixated around the American Negro. And why people like George Floyd can simulatanously exist as well as become venerated as a saint after death.
>>25412326I don’t think there’s any one book that captures all facets of the American experience. Blood MeridianMoby DickAgainst the DayGravity’s rainbow These would be my top choices. In the post literate society of today you can add one of the comic book movies I guessThe hallmark of the American tradition though is Empire, conquest, destruction and assimilation.
>>25412326Leaves of Grass/Song of Myself
>>25412326A Cycle of the West.
>>25412368This is certainly a strong contender, although too "partisan" to bring the US together around it, but the brazenly anti-intellectual americano-protestantism that treats statues as idolatry while believing in israel-dispensationalism should absolutely be the foundation of a US "national epic". Pic related might be a meme but putting Dianetics as the core American text is not that much of a stretch.
>>25412409Just say you hate culture.
>>25412343
>>25412326Moby Dick or Leaves of Grass
>>25412446No it isn't
>>25412585You sound like you have a fetish
>national epic
>>25412836Retard?
>>25412392no it doesn't
>>25412836>it’s bad so the obviously American homogenised slop site founded in America by Americans isn’t really AmericanWhatever you say mutt.
>>25412343>>25412326not enough americans today read unfortunately
>>25412326A national epic defines the moral and cultural paradigm of a people, in America's case it would probably be Night or some holocaust book.
>>25413513Wouldn’t that make Moby-Dick, a book about a body of men from all corners of the world led in a hubristic quest that destroys them as they go round the world, a really good choice? Prophetic really. Or were you making a funny joke about how absolutely zogged America is?
>>25412326Huckleberry Finn is the closest we'll ever get imo.
>>25412722lol
>>25412371>The Dark Toweryou cant be fucking seriousi tried to read that shit and it was terrible. dropped it a third of the way through. king writes great sentences, but is embarassingly incompetent at writing stories.
>>25413890She looks like she fucks zoomers.
>>25412326Wishful thinking : Moby Dick, plus the oeuvre of Henry James and Faulkner for the yankee and the southern experienceOddball answer : The Book of Mormon (no, really, many have argued for this unironically)Realistic answer : Civil Rights.>inb4 WW2Nobody under the age of 30 cares about the Battle of the Bulge or Iwo Jima.And they care even less about the revolutionary or the colonial era.
>>25413890That "Sail" parody was epic and still holds up>>25413915she might be walled enough by now to consider it
>>25413923yeah, the Revolution is for boomers, and GenX read Moldbug and understand what bullshit it was."Young Washington" (inb4 >>>/v/) is for boomers.
The Spirit of Seventy-Six
>>25412363>The mythicisation of WW2 in various films and tv showsNot even close. That'd be like if the Greeks tried to update the Iliad with a story about the Peloponnesian War; it just wouldn't be the same at all. Only the Civil War really stands out as a proper setting for an American Iliad.
>>25414050>catalogue of the ships but with ironcladsI want to read this
Mason & Dixon
>>25412326Shelby Foote
>>25412343>National>a story about one american, some natives, some arabs, and some africans that doesn't even take place in America
>>25412326Blood Meridian but unironically. The American mythos is effectively modernity as its facade resting upon an extremely violent, primal, blood soaked soil. If Europe can be categorized as being ancient lands full of tradition and religious undertones. America would have religion being just the mask hiding the vicious superbeast of man. As Christian as America seems to be, we really don't give a shit about morally good and evil characters but instead we care about characters who are "free". Not free in the sense that they can just hedonistically indulge in slop but free in the sense that they have the vitality (balls) to achieve greatness. Hence why it doesn't really matter if the person is some holier than thou figure or a literal domestic terrorist. Does he have the balls to live free in spite of the threat of death? That is what drives the American gestalt.
>>25412363>>25414050I think if any American war lends itself to mythology, it would be the Revolutionary War. The Trojan War took place in a different era from Classical Greece, hundreds of years before, just like the Revolutionary War did to a modern America. And that war is full of larger than life, semi-mythologized characters that every single American has at least a passing familiarity with. Washington crossing the Delaware even has a bit of a Trojan Horse kind of flair to it.
A founding mythos effectively consolidates the overall worldview and culture that shapes a people or entire civilization. So in order to answer OP's question you have to first figure out what the American mythos or overarching worldview it imposes. Some of the main points of the Iliad is how it views the world outside of the lands ruled over by Zeus is effectively a kill or be killed "there are no pacts between wolves and sheep" understanding. >>25414080I don't know if it could be Blood Meridian specifically but at least the general idea here is touching upon what I mean. America not too long ago was a wild place and the US itself imposed itself upon the lands by the gun. There's a sort of wild untamedness to the American spirit. It honestly, at least to me, makes it lean closer to some Nietzschean raw will to power rather than some enlightenment or religious view.
>>25413513What do you think the national epics of Canada, England, Australia and New Zealand are?
I would've said Seven Dreams by Vollmann but MAYBE A Table for Fortune instead
>>25413890>i tried to read that shit and it was terrible. dropped it a third of the way through.You were filtered. The Dark Tower is a greater literary achievement than Paradise Lost or In Search of Lost Time
>>25414080Going along the same lines, the United States is basically a Faustian nation. It believes it can impose the human will and the human spirit on all of reality. Think of America's great reshaping projects: the Hoover Dam, Mount Rushmore, tunnels and highways through mountains, the Panama Canal. America thinks it can bend the cosmos to its will, and that everyone, even God Himself, has to answer to the American Spirit in one way or another.In that regard, I actually do think Moby-Dick is an interesting choice, but on the other hand, Moby-Dick contains an undercurrent of discord in the American worldview. Because, after all, the message of Moby-Dick is that you actually CAN'T bend God and the cosmos to your will in the end, that the bill comes due, that your hubris catches up with you, and that the Machinery of the Universe winds up smashing man to smithereens if he sports with it too hotly.Moby-Dick, we might say, is a story ABOUT America, one that UNDERSTANDS America, but doesn't fully buy in to the myths Americans tell about themselves. Ahab is a quintessential American in this regard, and what happens to Ahab, in the end?
Call of the Crocodile
>>25414273how are americas dams different than chinas dams?
Probably Gone With The Wind. Fittingly, it's about a pair of awful cynical cunts.
>>25412326Little House In The Big Woods
>>25413923>Nobody under the age of 30 cares about the Battle of the Bulge or Iwo Jima.The actual military aspect of WW2 might have taken a backseat, nonetheless the war as a battle between liberalism and "fascism" still serves as a foundational myth of the Western Order. There is a reason fascist and nazi arr such a popular political accusation.
>>25412326Cloud Atlas
>>25414273It's a Greek tragedy. We know the inevitability yet we forge ahead, not just regardless of this knowledge, but in spite of it. America almost encapsulates European man coming full circle, raging just beneath the surface of Christian "city on a hill" lies the devouring lust for conquest. You could go as far as to say that America anthropomorphized as a god would be one of the most schizo gods of them all. Rather fitting then unironically how back in the day America as a nation was somewhat deified not by a god but by a goddess. Lady Columbia.
>>25412326star wars 1-6
>>25414270Bruh.
>>25415360The United States is absolutely a rival god. American Patriotism is basically old fashioned Roman-style state cultus. America is a rival god and a jealous god and when you really push on her she brooks no competition.I think that's why the ancient Churches have such a hard time with the United States. America and the Catholic Church are basically blood enemies, while the Orthodox have been almost kept away entirely. The non-Prot Churches, at least the ancient ones, really do maintain a concrete devotion to Christ, which brings them into conflict with the United States because the US demands to be worshiped.
