In high school, I was assigned The Great Gatsby, which I despised. In Mexico City, of all places, I found an Indiana University magazine called The Folio, which included reprinted sections from another F. Scott Fitzgerald book, This Side of Paradise (1920). Much better written than Gatsby, it includes his wife's experiences as a so-called flapper, giving the prose a liveliness I hadn't expected. (One of my favorite songs, the Pet Shop Boys' "Being Boring," was inspired by Zelda Fitzgerald.) Here's the portion I liked:
Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, through a revery of long days and nights; destined finally to go out into that dirty gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken...
Sounds like Allen Ginsburg and the 50s' Beat Generation, doesn't it? Excepting my wonderful math and science teachers, the lack of mirth in my American middle school and high school teachers makes me increasingly convinced the Europeans and others are misdirecting Americans on matters of the English language and literature in order to preserve their status as arbiters of Western culture. Here's another segment from the same 1936 magazine:
I don't smoke, but I love this paragraph. It's beautifully written and helps me, a non-smoker, understand why someone would pay to get mouth and lung cancer. The ability to transfer your love of an activity, a person, or a thing to another is the essence of writing, something I see rarely these days. Part of the problem is America's habit of "borrowing" culture from other countries; part of it is North America's geographical isolation; and part of it is its relatively small population, only 4 to 5% of the world's. Taken together, you'd think most Americans would agree immigration is a necessary national goal to prevent well-funded, well-traveled military culture from taking over the dialogue, but as liberal elites began disdaining difference not aligned with popularity, they paved the way for the most dull amongst them to rise, providing little resistance to conservative (think)tanks.
And so here we are, starved for creativity and ravenously hungry despite being overly fed. Without good, honest, and interesting writers, we cannot place ourselves in a fellow resident's shoes, making politics a game between the out-of-touch and the even more out-of-touch, and giving marketers undeserved influence. My personal solution seems to be reviewing the old creeds, which aren't much different than the new, human nature being what it is. But the more I delve into the past, the more I taste decline in the present, and the more my palate demands justice.
Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, through a revery of long days and nights; destined finally to go out into that dirty gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken...
Sounds like Allen Ginsburg and the 50s' Beat Generation, doesn't it? Excepting my wonderful math and science teachers, the lack of mirth in my American middle school and high school teachers makes me increasingly convinced the Europeans and others are misdirecting Americans on matters of the English language and literature in order to preserve their status as arbiters of Western culture. Here's another segment from the same 1936 magazine:
I don't smoke, but I love this paragraph. It's beautifully written and helps me, a non-smoker, understand why someone would pay to get mouth and lung cancer. The ability to transfer your love of an activity, a person, or a thing to another is the essence of writing, something I see rarely these days. Part of the problem is America's habit of "borrowing" culture from other countries; part of it is North America's geographical isolation; and part of it is its relatively small population, only 4 to 5% of the world's. Taken together, you'd think most Americans would agree immigration is a necessary national goal to prevent well-funded, well-traveled military culture from taking over the dialogue, but as liberal elites began disdaining difference not aligned with popularity, they paved the way for the most dull amongst them to rise, providing little resistance to conservative (think)tanks.
And so here we are, starved for creativity and ravenously hungry despite being overly fed. Without good, honest, and interesting writers, we cannot place ourselves in a fellow resident's shoes, making politics a game between the out-of-touch and the even more out-of-touch, and giving marketers undeserved influence. My personal solution seems to be reviewing the old creeds, which aren't much different than the new, human nature being what it is. But the more I delve into the past, the more I taste decline in the present, and the more my palate demands justice.
I go to working-class Calgary, Canada in one week. Let's see what's on the menu there.
© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2019)
Bonus: meanwhile, in China...
Bonus: meanwhile, in China...
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