Various things stick out for me as particularly American in Cheever’s short stories but the one thing I think I’ll focus on is treatment of class – many, if not all of his stories are set among the middle class, those social climbers who are forever having cocktail parties. I think that in British short stories, if there’s an undercurrent of class issues to be found, both the reader and the story itself will be somewhat aware of it. American short stories, particularly Cheever’s, set it up as a case of whether you do or do not have the money to back it up, it doesn’t really look at the general privileges and attitudes that come with the social class you are born into. E.g. in ‘the Swimmer’ when Ned’s snubbed by the barman. However, in the story this moment is about showing Ned is not as nice as he seems, and also about his real or imagined sense of persecution. It’s not really a comment about how class works in America; it’s very much based on the individual’s response. This is the issue I’ve decided to solely go on about simply because those suburban cocktail parties turn up in nearly every bloody story. I couldn’t help but compare them to the cocktail party in the Great Gatsby – one that does talk about middle class consumption, ideals, gaudiness, and attitudes towards new money.
What would make a story ‘uniquely British’?
I went on much more than I planned to up there, so keeping this to one thing as well – pathetic fallacy is definitely uniquely British in my view, at least in comparison to the USA’s creative output – I should imagine pathetic fallacy is also important in Europe and elsewhere in the world, because practically everywhere else has the history and resulting sense of place to back their pathetic fallacy up. Perhaps pathetic fallacy about rain and bad weather is uniquely British – see Wuthering Heights for a start.
Would you want to write a narrative that was uniquely identifiable with any culture?
I think it’s impossible to not be informed by the attitude of the culture you grow up in, so I don’t think it’s a case of whether you want to or not. Our stories will be likely to always have a British sensibility, attitude, flavour, etc.
If people are going to respond to this, maybe you could suggest anyone / any writing that you think is free from their cultural background in their writing? my first thought was Neil Gaiman, but isn’t part of his writing – particularly regarding American Gods – that he’s writes from the outsider’s perspective on the USA, USA famously being the country of people who arrived from elsewhere.
It's an interesting question to ask, 'Who has escaped from their culture?'. I would suggest that the most obvious examples would be writers whose genres take them outside of reality.
ReplyDeleteI'm not personally a huge fan of the fantasy or sci-fi genres, but a good writer in either genre often has to try and create a new, unique cultural background for their characters.
In my opinion this is the reason why so many people are left cold by work in those genres. Many readers do not identify with these alien (no pun intended) cultures and their invented history.
I would tentatively suggest Isaac Asimov and Terry Pratchett as writers who have done this very well, but Pratchett's work in particular progressed to make the Discworld a mirror to this world in which he could highlight the absurdities of the world we live in without directly criticising real individuals and institutions.
Others have tended to be writers who have emigrated from their country of birth and spent enough time in another country to write convincingly about their adopted country's culture.
For example, P.G. Wodehouse managed to adapt a number of his extremely British characters to set them in New York, and although the American characters tended to play second fiddle to established British favourites, the novels set in New York had a very different flavour to those set in London or Blandings, despite the style of writing remaining inimitably his.
I have also read a lot of Terry Pratchett; it would be very intriguing to re-read his novels and pick out suggestions of our own world in relation to the Discworld.
DeleteI've also read a lot of Terry Pratchett and I agree. I haven't read any Asimov, however, I can think of quite a few other authors who display national characteristics in their sci-fi - e.g. Ray Bradbury. This makes me wonder whether not being able to have some sense of earthly social background to a sci-fi work might actually be a bad thing - for example, your characters are on Mars but they got there in a rocket launched from New York (or wherever) and you should be able to tell that. The current trend does definitely seem to be post-apocalyptic futures, but surely to write that kind of thing you need to acknowledge the existence of what went before your novel's set period?
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