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Aug. 11th, 2025 01:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nundinaeStuff to think about! Vincenzo Latronico on the imperialism-like dominance of English-language literature.
Primacy of English and the US/UK cultural hegemony is something I've mostly seen discussed in academic spaces, with colleagues who deal with topics that have little to do with US or UK being frequently dismissed by editors with claims of "irrelevance" (of course some parts of Europe are less peripheral than others). Lorenzo seems to be presenting an interesting and fascinating synthesis.
Also, I was familiar with the Minae Mizumura quote before. Maybe I'm overidentifying with being peripheral, but honestly, regretting the choice of your first language as you first language, and regretting not having given up that language in favour of English is just about the most tragic and heart-breaking thing I can at all imagine. I do real a lot in English, but I also read in other languages, and every time I am deprived of one of them for too long, I'm feeling the deepest existential angst! Who are we but the words that make us?
Re: the American literary claims to the universalism of the American experience - all human experience has obviously the potential to be universal, but at the same time my American favourites have always been the very particular ones. The Legacy of Q was especially fascinating, because Helene Hanff wrote about her New York, and her experience in the New York theatre (and what a pity that she didn't write more about it!).
I've also never liked David Foster Wallace. Maybe that's that.
It's a pity that Latronico's book is about authenticity in the age of social media, as this is one of the least interesting things I can imagine.
Primacy of English and the US/UK cultural hegemony is something I've mostly seen discussed in academic spaces, with colleagues who deal with topics that have little to do with US or UK being frequently dismissed by editors with claims of "irrelevance" (of course some parts of Europe are less peripheral than others). Lorenzo seems to be presenting an interesting and fascinating synthesis.
Also, I was familiar with the Minae Mizumura quote before. Maybe I'm overidentifying with being peripheral, but honestly, regretting the choice of your first language as you first language, and regretting not having given up that language in favour of English is just about the most tragic and heart-breaking thing I can at all imagine. I do real a lot in English, but I also read in other languages, and every time I am deprived of one of them for too long, I'm feeling the deepest existential angst! Who are we but the words that make us?
Re: the American literary claims to the universalism of the American experience - all human experience has obviously the potential to be universal, but at the same time my American favourites have always been the very particular ones. The Legacy of Q was especially fascinating, because Helene Hanff wrote about her New York, and her experience in the New York theatre (and what a pity that she didn't write more about it!).
I've also never liked David Foster Wallace. Maybe that's that.
It's a pity that Latronico's book is about authenticity in the age of social media, as this is one of the least interesting things I can imagine.