I don't hate American authors at all, Thucy--
One of my Top 6 was born in America (though I'd still count T.S. Eliot as English), and besides him:
I like Fitzgerald quite a bit...
Hemingway I like as well, though not nearly as much as some do...
Steinbeck is fantastic, and both "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Of Mice and Men" are absolute masterpieces, the former ESPECIALLY being on par with so many of the great British novels, so as we teach theirs, I hope they find the time to teach "The Grapes of Wrath" every once in a while, it deserves it...
Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Emily Dickinson has some good poetry, ditto Walt Whitman--
It's just that, as I said, the British roster is older, and so FAR deeper.
It has a ridiculous wealth of riches author-wise--
Chaucer, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, Blake, Austen, the Brontes, Byron, Keats, the Shelleys, Dickens, George Eliot, Hardy, Wilde, Shaw, Woolf, Lawrence, Yeats, Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Forster, Orwell, Beckett, and on and on and on...
I could go back and fill in more for each era (except Chaucer's, though that's just due to how long ago it was, the identity of the Pearl Poet being lost to us...and I could include others, but they wouldn't be on Chaucer's level) or I could go forward in time and give the Evelyn Waughs and Zadie Smiths and Pat Barkers attention.
I lumped in some Irish writers, as college courses here do, but even if you wanted to consider them their own entity, you STILL have a ton of top-shelf authors.
Maybe even more impressively--you can dislike or even HATE a good amount of those A-list British authors (I'm looking at YOU, Charlotte Bronte...and to a lesser extent Emily and Anne Bronte...you're hit and miss, George Eliot...so it's a good thing I have made my peace with Austen, gossipy passages aside, and have Woolf in my Top 6 Favorites, or I'd get the reputation of hating great British female writers, lol) and you're STILL left with so many great authors that you can accurately say that you really love British literature on the whole, the roster is THAT deep.
The plain truth is the American roster isn't yet.
You have Poe and a few others before you get to Twain, if you don't like Twain, you have to wait for either Henry James (and given his shuttling across the Atlantic, and the fact his books are so often about English and American societies interacting, I don't know how quintessentially "American" he really is) or, more likely, the 20th century to enjoy good literature--
And while the American 20th century lineup is fantastic, one of the better century lineups for national literature out there, and you could maybe even make the argument that it rivals the British output that century (I'd give a slight edge to the British in the first half of the century, and then to us in the second half, but it's great all-around, it's a huge reason why, after Shakespeare, the Modernist period's my favorite in all of literature) you're still more limited.
Don't like Hemingway, Fitzgerald or Steinbeck?
You've already lost a huge chunk of the first 40% or so of the century for us.
Don't like The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, The Catcher in the Rye or To Kill a Mockingbird?
Those are the four "Great American Novel" candidates from that century, so you're left without an all-star.
Don't like T.S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath and their styles of poetry?
Aside from Robert Frost, there goes the century for white poets.
Speaking of, African-American literature is VERY rich and the lineup's impressive...
But if you don't like it...well, I'd ask WHY you somehow don't like their literature, but that aside, if for whatever reason it's not your thing, you've lost a lot again.
That's the great thing about British Lit--in almost any post-Shakespeare time period, and especially once you get past Austen, the depth is incredible. You have a ton of options. It's extremely deep and versatile, almost to the point of resiliency...you can keep ripping out author after author from your bookshelf if you're really that infuriated with Shakespeare or Austen or whomever, and you're still left with very few holes chronologically, because as soon as you throw a hallowed Brit Lit book or three away, four more pop up in their place that are just as deserving.
I hope someday they say that about American Lit. I WANT them to say that.
But we're simply not there yet. Pre-1910 or so it's very porous, with only a few all-stars, and if you dislike one or more of them you diminish the literary prestige of America in that time period by a lot, because so much rides on those few shining authors...and then even once you get to the 20th century, well, you can't beat Brit Lit still, because they had a thousand or so year head-start (and 1000 years is probably the wrong amount to pick, but it sounded nice, and if you want an exact date you're screwed, lol) so the tradition's a lot stronger.
One of my favorite essays is "Tradition and the Individual Talent" by good old T.S. "I Read Everything Ever and Shall Now Foist My Snobbery Onto You" Eliot. :)
Maybe we'll catch up, I hope so, but for now, it's like being a Mets fan--
I root for the team with far less success and prestige, sure, but there's no getting around the fact that the Yankees' 27 World Series bests my Mets' 2.
Those two are great, and I'd argue the Miracle Mets of '69 and 1986 Mets (sorry, bo_sox) are far more memorable than a host of Yankees teams...the same way Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Twain and Steinbeck all make our presence felt and can dwarf some of the British authors (I like Forster, but I'd take all four of these guys over him, and over the Brontes as well)...
But it's still 27 to 2.
So, what I'm trying to say, Thucy, is that the British are those Damn Yankees. ;)
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