12-10-2017, 08:14 AM
Quote:why don’t british writers or australian writers or french writers or german writers (serious german writers) or russian writers harbor similar desires?
Ego. The cult of the individual. The desperate need to be thought of as the best. I don't think any of us have that, as nations -- the British were the best at one point, arguably, but have long since abandoned that concept of supremacy. Additionally, pinning a national identity upon a single static point in history is backwards-looking -- do American writers truly want to write the Great American Novel, or do they merely want to have written it?
It could be worse