American literature - Wikiquote American literature From Wikiquote Jump to navigation Jump to search American literature is literature written or produced in the United States. This theme article is a stub. You can help Wikiquote by expanding it. Quotes[edit] Here is one of the fundamental defects of American fiction—perhaps the one character that sets it off sharply from all other known kinds of contemporary fiction. It habitually exhibits, not a man of delicate organization in revolt against the inexplicable tragedy of existence, but a man of low sensibilities and elemental desires yielding himself gladly to his environment, and so achieving what, under a third-rate civilization, passes for success. To get on: this is the aim. To weigh and reflect, to doubt and rebel: this is the thing to be avoided. H. L. Mencken, “The National Letters,” Prejudices: Second Series (New York: 1920), pp. 39-40 A superior man’s struggle in the world is not with exterior lions, trusts, margraves, policemen, rivals in love, German spies, radicals and tornadoes, but with the obscure, atavistic impulses within him—the impulses, weaknesses and limitations that war with his notion of what life should be. ... The hero of the inferior—i.e., the typically American—novel engages in no such doomed and fateful combat. His conflict is not with the inexplicable ukases of destiny, the limitations of his own strength, the dead hand upon him, but simply with the superficial desires of his elemental fellow men. He thus has a fair chance of winning—and in bad fiction that chance is always converted into a certainty. So he marries the daughter of the owner of the factory and eventually gobbles the factory itself. His success gives thrills to persons who can imagine no higher aspiration. He embodies their optimism, as the other hero embodies the pessimism of more introspective and idealistic men. He is the protagonist of that great majority which is so inferior that it is quite unconscious of its inferiority. H. L. Mencken, “The National Letters,” Prejudices: Second Series (New York: 1920), p. 43 See also[edit] Literature United States External links[edit] Wikipedia has an article about: American literature Retrieved from "https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=American_literature&oldid=2728139" Categories: Theme stubs Literature Society of the United States Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Page Discussion Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Community portal Village pump Recent changes Random page Help Donate Contact Wikiquote Wikiquote links People Literary works Proverbs Films TV shows Themes Categories Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Create a book Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikimedia Commons Wikibooks Wikipedia In other languages Add links This page was last edited on 15 January 2020, at 22:03. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Privacy policy About Wikiquote Disclaimers Mobile view Developers Statistics Cookie statement