alt Hacker NewsWho Is America's Homer?
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"America's Homer" isn't someone you pick by committee. The fact that you have to debate means that this person does not exist. The American literary tradition is far too new for someone to have the kind of impact as others on the list. We are talking about people who, through their writing, created and evolved language itself.
No single author has defined how America speaks and writes the way Dante did for Italian or Cervantes for Spanish. And perhaps no one ever will.
Mark Twain is America's Homer
One aspect of Huckleberry Finn (the novel) that I think is relevant today is the spectacularly stupid zero-sum conflict between the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons. It seems relevant to the US's politics and many international conflicts
Unfortunately that title is already reserved in the US for Homer Simpson.
I love this thread and this question. I'm going to argue that it's Francis Ford Coppola. His Filmography in the 1970's I think captures America, the myth and the realities, for both their glamour and horror, better than anyone else before or after.
1972 -- The Godfather -- This encapsulates the American Dream better than anything else. It captures the arc of an immigrant story, of fitting in with America, and what it takes to succeed.
1974 -- The Conversation -- Chronicles where America is going as technology and politics changes and the impacts on our culture, through one man at the center of it.
1974 -- The Godfather Part II -- The story of an America and the image that it's built up, and the bloodshed necessary to both get there, and to cleanse its hands from the past.
1979 -- Apocalypse Now -- The sins of a nation that's ascended, and how the rest of the world must deal with America, and what it does to the psyche of those charged with empire building.
There's a body of work there that captures America in its totality more comprehensively than what anyone else has done. If I had to reduce this down to one choice, then it's simply The Godfather.
The most technically correct answer is Walt Whitman.
Longfellow got dismissed by several people here for being too sentimental - but I would argue that sentimentality and saccharine character is distinctly part of America's mythos.
Washington Irving and Parson Weems would both also be good candidates. Early writers who had a penchant for mixing real history with tall tales.
The name I would throw out is John Ford. Ford basically invented the modern action movie, the mythology of the West, redefined masculinity, established the tropes of a hero, etc.
That would be the poet-king Yoyontzin¹, not any of these post-Columbus nitwits.
Poetry has fallen out of favor in culture at large, so I think it’s more logical to expand the question to authors more generally.
In that case, I think The Great Gatsby is the most logical equivalent to the Iliad and Odyssey. To me it conveys the essential elements of the American character: obsessed with reinvention via commerce, but inevitably tied to the past. It’s also probably been read by the majority of Americans, or at least the story is well-known. Can’t say the same for Twain, Melville, etc.
For more recent authors though, I think Don DeLillo is the best chronicler of mid-late century America.
easy one:
"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." Ernest Hemingway
An odd question. America's "founding myths" are the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution.
These are the Holy Scriptures, and - like the Homeric ones - have multiple authors but lack the obscurity of ancient history to allow that latter fact to be subsumed into the story as a single, blind bard.
I like the alternatives suggested in this thread over what is being proposed in the article:
* Mark Twain * Matt Groening
They are people who have captured the zeitgeist of their time and immortalized it in their art. They deliver their (countercultural) messages in an accessible and relatable way and have had a huge impact on our society.
I would add Shel Silverstein as my personal favorite.
isn't it obviously steinbeck?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_of_Eden_(novel)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grapes_of_Wrath (one of the best books i've ever read)
Lots of excellent suggestions here. F. Scott Fitzgerald's missing so far - that's not necessarily who I'd choose but he belongs in the conversation. I don't think he's an especially interesting pick - Gatsby is cited as the Great American Novel as often as Moby Dick or Huck Finn - but he's a superlative writer who (like every high schooler in the country knows) explicitly and directly engaged with the meaning of America.
Willa Cather?
Homer, or the Homeric tradition, arose as rootless people displaced by drought and war in ~1,000 BC needed to sell the idea that entertaining stranger guests who had only stories from afar was worth doing, and that they shared common gods (versus the city-specific gods of earlier). This mind-set supported looser city-state alliances and cultures open to trading and ideas, who then outgrew the more xenophobic cities (like the Etruscans). So they semi-accidentally created a legitimizing belief system and thereby stumbled into founder roles.
America as the land of opportunity has flourished by acquiring more land and capturing value better, mainly by diminishing obligations to country and god and fellow humans. Yes, many writers bore witness to the frictions this involved with varying degrees of acuity or tragi-comedy, but no American writer wrote in a way that actually established this American mindset.
I think instead the mindset is perpetuated by each era building achievement heroes, stimulating belief in unbounded personal possibility. American literature is reduced to pointing out the vacuous consequences. As William Carlos-Williams wrote looking into his mirror in middle age, "I am lonely, lonely. I was born to be lonely, I am best so! [...] Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?"
If I had a vote, I'd nominate Willa Cather as the writer who portrayed that knowing moment of the powerless, non-achieving people enthralled with the beauty of nature as it was being destroyed. It's not what guides Americans prospectively, but it might best reflect history's perspective and our own retrospectives.
(I should add that I'm glad America has hoisted individuals and done so much to lift the global standards of living and care, even if it was more by greed and necessity than charity.)
Stephen King. Homer was not great literature at the time he his works were written. He was popular entertainment with a dose of folk religion. I’m not sure Homer existed. 1000 years from now people will say the same of SK.
A side note: the article starts with "If England has Shakespeare, Spain has Cervantes, Italy has Dante, and Russia has Pushkin, then who do we have?" but does not mention China: usually Li Bai (李白) and Du Fu (杜甫) from Tang Dynasty (1300 years ago) are regarded the best poets in the history of China. Li Bai is nicknamed Immortal of Poetry (诗仙), while Du Fu is nicknamed the Saint of Poetry (诗圣). Most scholars like Du Fu better because his poems' use of all the connotative overtones, but most regular people like Li Bai better because his poems are easier to understand.
Homer Simpson - was my first thought when I read this...
Longfellow, and that’s a hill I’d die on. Or Shakespeare; I’d die on that hill too.
Weird Al, obviously. He’s the only one capable of combining our oral traditions into a single coherent body of work.
> Do we have a great poet who captures the American spirit, the American story, the American identity?
Dare I suggest Bob Dylan?
Barlow?
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8683/8683-h/8683-h.htm
I wouldn't actually vote for him but I don't think he should be forgotten and he should be mentioned in such a discussion. I would probably say Stein, solely for The Making of Americans.
no talk about the only american writer with the guts to try to be like homer? the battlefield where the moon says i love you by frank stanford. obscure just like homer was in his time.
also, no mention in these comments about william faulkner?
though, i would bet money that "the american homer" will be somebody most readers have never heard of.
it's definitely not twain or hemingway, like everybody is saying. if you think it's twain, then it is faulkner, who was the first white writer to not write a one dimensional black character.
and no talk about toni morrison?? zora neale hurston??? do y'all read american literature?
Reducing these countries to a single name is probably the reason why we can guess this was written by an american; each country has at least a bunch of inspired authors per couple of generations. The country it is actively being bombed right now is the "modern" reincarnation of a nation that is roughly 10x older than the US. We all know who american Homer is, and this is the first year ever we whish we was the president. Friggin noobs.
Homer is the Homer of America, unless you believe in fencing off universal properties of mankind into exclusive tribal ownership.
(cf Saul Bellow asking “who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus”, and Ralph Wiley in the Atlantic saying that Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus.)
Probably more Socrates or Plato, but I feel like Emerson needs to be mentioned in this thread somewhere.
The stories still passed down and translated into other languages two thousand years from now will be the answer. I think Sherman's memoirs could become something like the Iliad. They're surprisingly funny, engaging, and insightful, and Mark Twain (mentioned in this comment thread) had a hand in the memoirs IIRC.
I saw the title and thought they were looking for a real Homer Simpson.
Solid read.
Recommendations elaborated on in the article are a solid set. Mark Twain or Walt Whitman would probably get my vote.
Albeit a British show, but valid nonetheless. https://youtu.be/t1d3lIcuEMU
America's Homer is Shakespeare!
Lotta obvious answers left off because this seems to be about poets specifically.
From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us.
I feel like Stevie Wonder is a better choice than most proposed here
The contrarian in me wants to say Margaret Mitchell.
Isn't simpson enough
Tracy Chapman is a really really good pick!
I would pick F. Scott Fitzgerald. His book, The Great Gatsby, showed us that the 1920s in America was a highly divided society that was corrupted by materialism and more. His pessimism gives us a pretty good view into the past.
No one mentioning Gore Vidal (or Truman Capote)... so sad
“Do we have a great poet who captures the American spirit, the American story, the American identity?”
No. There’s no singular “American identity” or story to capture. The U.S. has produced some amazing writers and storytellers who are, IMO, equal to the greats of other countries, but we have no collective identity that can be captured by a single person.
But if you put a gun to my head to identify one, I might argue for Steven Spielberg. If the U.S. has a Homer they’re not a poet or writer, they’re a filmmaker or TV producer.
The films he’s directed certainly capture big parts of the American mythologies, perhaps the largest of a single person.
Another option: Norman Lear. Maybe even more than Spielberg with All in the Family, Good Times, The Jeffersons, One Day at a Time… yeah. He definitely nailed a broad slice of American culture for a good chunk of time.
this is not super productive, but not including “Germany has Goethe” in the opening line turned me off immediately
I think this is a category error. Homer is the iconic writer of the Ancient Greek language and culture, not the modern nation of Greece. Cervantes and Dante are the iconic writers in the Spanish and Italian languages, respectively, not the nations of Spain or Italy. Italy wouldn't even exist as a nation until 500 years after Dante.
The American equivalent of Homer, Dante, or Cervantes is Shakespeare.
Hot take (with recency bias): Ron Chernow
Homer and Virgil were historians at the end of the day. Whether what they reported as happening was true or not is as irrelevant as whether Alexander Hamilton threw away his shot at Aaron Burr or not. Their writings, just like Chernow’s, are steeped in legend.
Chernow’s work has excellently captured:
Alexander Hamilton John D Rockefeller JP Morgan Ulysses (!) S. Grant Etc.
As I type this out, perhaps the best comparison for Chernow is actually Plutarch? Either way, I haven’t seen anyone mention him and that would be an unfortunate oversight.
Frank Lloyd Wright. The true spirit of America is building.
U guys will not agree i think, but for us, the non-usa, majority gonna choose Stephen king, he is your culture, the USA culture btw is 50s to 2000s and he capture all the feeling
We probably need more time to say for sure, but it might be David Chase. The Sopranos is partly an extended character study of someone who strives to fill American values as we imagine ourselves but also embodies American values as they actually exist.
I cannot answer that and I think it will be years before, so I went with "Nobody Yet".
Tracy Chapman is an interesting pick, but I think she could be in the future. But I am surprised Thoreau was not in the list, at least from what I was able to read.
No Mark Twain?
America doesn't have a "Homer", because it has a very rich competitive market.
In the USSR, people of multiple generations grew up watching the same things, e.g. "Nu Pogodi"
In the USA, every 10 years there's some new genre of music, or artists being promoted.
Homer is known because back then, very few people could even read - let alone write. Actually, Homer couldn't, I think.
I think it is somewhat weird that nobody put Twain in.
I could also see someone suggesting Hemingway, although I don't buy it.
Hart Crane at this point in time seems somewhat secondary, so that was surprising.
The Tracy Chapman thing seemed seriously like a troll, I could definitely agree to a black Homer, but then I guess it would be Langston Hughes or James Baldwin as my choices.
To suggest someone though who has the name recognition for American literature that Homer had for the Greeks, it would need to be Twain. You can't really have a great national writer that hardly anybody in the nation can name.