American Culture

[Wolfe, Skip]

Hartwin Alfred Gebhardt sez:

"At his best, [TRP is] not an American author at all, but a world author."

Yes -- and in his excellent essay "Gravity's Encyclopedia" ( in _Mindful 
Pleasures_), Edward Mendelson identifies _GR_ as the international 
encyclopedic narrative (only one allowed per nation or culture, and _Moby 
Dick_ is already the USA's).  (According to Mendelson, an encyclopedic 
narrative appears "near the beginning of a culture's or a nation's sense of 
its own separate existence.")  This implies the advent of an international 
culture and TRP, I guess, as its spokesman or encyclopedist.

     Skip Wolfe
     crw4 at nip1.em.cdc.gov