Myth Making

Myth making ‘The social picture was changing fast, with the rising commercialism and city life; Chicago had 350 inhabitants in 1833 and 300,000 in 1870. And the westward push warned of even more changes to come. The nation was ‘growing too fast for its virtue and its peace’-Emerson. It needed interpreters of its life more penetrating than the genre of painters –a national literature which read the meaning of the new American realities to the American common man. But this order as yet could not be filled. Even before the Civil War the changes were too rapid and close and the aim of the nation to divided. The Americans tried to build their house in the middle of a landslide and the governing classes of the Eastern Seaboard naturally clung to stability in literature no less than in politics. Their American ness was only a minor addition to their British culture….These writers timidity in handling national characteristics was demonstrated by Washington Irving….But all these writers moved with the same peaceful and somewhat tepid atmosphere, and this was in particular the case with the Boston professors and poets who set the standards of American literary life to the end of the (19th) century …. P92/93 Time Life –The United States Writing in chapter five of The United States the born again American formerly from Norway- Sigmund Skard struggles to say anything meaningful on the topic of American literature. Now he doesn’t as I would have done mention the outstanding journalism found in- until Rupert Murdock killed it- The TV Guide or books by Grace Metalous but as we see the unwillingness of Americans to critically define and interact with the reality of what they were doing and had been doing for two hundred years by this critical 1830 decade- Is Taylor Made for Myth Making- Comic books instead of serious and complex 1200 page dramas. And that as he says is because Boston professors are setting the standards therefore dictating what will be published and what will not be published. which reminds me of the healthy Unreality found in the New England photo essay p17-19 showing the Neptune Fireman’s band leading the American legion color guard Memorial Day parade 1963 in the town of Ipswich Mass and the still waters of Cape Porpoise and just around the corner from the Bush family hideaway holiday home -‘delightfully peaceful Kennebunkport’ and ‘Spring’s blossoms bring an unexpected gay.. to the spare, orderly townscape of Yarmouth Me’. But finally when some real literature got published in 1956- ‘Peyton Place’ then set about demolishing that New England Myth and despite being slandered as trash the book deservedly sold over 12 million copies and is still profitably read by those seeking to study literature and reality for USA. When I grew up it was in the study of The National Geographic but by my early teens I knew that the similar magazines I avidly read telling of life in USSR and ‘China Reconstructs magazine’ were considered to be propaganda – Which then raised the question as to why Nat Geo wasn’t! So from that time onwards I began to store in my brain vast files of material by reading as widely as possible so that I could compare and cross reference and thus begin to go around the back of the myths and see the backroom reality behind; generating all the images. This is not to say we cannot find in the American 1830s many fine sources of literature to study. Thanks to the hard work undertaken to micro film the historic contents of Mormon Church Archive we have a real insight into what was really happening at that time. And so the finest piece of American Literature produced at that time would have to be The Book of Mormon. As a work of fiction I have seldom seen better! And do some people think man made myths are real? Well yes! In 2012 the people of USA narrowly avoided having a rich white man who actually believes the Book of Mormon is genuinely God’s Word- Deluded candidate for Myth Making President! Oh well back to my studies- paul.