Comments on: The 42nd Parallel

By: Jeff Rubard

Jeff Rubard — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 01:32:25 +0000

I just got in and let me say, boy, I love the real America: full of people with small cars and excellent reasons to be leftists, really somewhat unlike the “bluest” areas of the “blue” states (really, WTF people). So let me retrieve a pearl I dropped somewhere along the way. Brecht’s Mahagonny is set in a Northwestern city with opulent drinking facilities and a forward-minded ambience; but really, The Alabama Song and a city with the world’s biggest bar and a funny name could point in different directions as to the “real-life inspiration”, no?

By: Eric H

Eric H — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 14:42:00 +0000

(having an odograph moment here)

Oh, I almost forgot: the movie National Treasure: Book of Secrets. The people in the movie have clearly never been to the US.

By: Eric H

Eric H — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 14:33:56 +0000

Yes, from modern Germany: Wild West Pizza Potato!

By: notsneaky

notsneaky — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 02:41:02 +0000

Re: 28

There was also the whole phenomenon of “Indianerfilme” and “Red Westerns”. Gojko Mitic (“the most famous Indian in Eastern Europe”)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gojko_Mitic)
(http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0593900/bio)(funny)
was huge in Eastern Europe (though until I looked this up I thought he was East German).
Here’s some goodies (Let’s all worship the mighty youtube. Never thought I’d see these again):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zlmj0GkCJKM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raMkYILQp7E&feature=related (there’s a naked male butt in this one)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsQcSKFffNI&feature=related

Can’t find what used to be my favorite as a kid though, “Tecumseh”.

Here’s some essay on the topic:
http://www.wazel.org/wildeast/babook.htm

On the whole topic “Indians and Eastern Europeans” there was also Alfred Szklarski’s “Sioux” trilogy along similar lines as above (though Szklarski did much more research) but that’s even more obscure.

By: mofo

mofo — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 01:39:46 +0000

rea—I really enjoyed the site you linked; thanks.

Funny that in the 30’s New Orleans was envisaged as a Gulf Coast big city; not Houston,which was still a two-horse town compared to NOLA’s then -bustling port & melting pot.

By: Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Patrick Nielsen Hayden — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:54:10 +0000

“Other examples of this sort of thing?”

Well, practically all of Tintin In America.

By: Jacob T. Levy

Jacob T. Levy — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:18:45 +0000

Winna, thanks for posting that Thurber bit—I’d never seen it before and can hardly stop laughing.

“Under socialism Holbo will be relieved of his teaching duties and spend all his socially necessary labor time dredging up more artifacts like this one.”

That’s socialism I can get behind.

By: jim

jim — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:13:19 +0000

Ginger Yellow @26 has it exactly right (to adopt an unfoggedism). What’s really nice about the cover is the use of the same icon for each of the four cities—New York, Chicago, New Orleans and Seattle.

By: HG

HG — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:32:33 +0000

sorry, but isn’t the cover precisely about Dos Passos book—in the very beginning, the long passage about all those things that the US also is, but that it ultimately is about “the speech of the people”—I think the cover manages to capture the pastiche, the snapshots, the breathlessness.

Sure, unions are missing, and industry isn’t there. But “vague sense of a foreign land”? Nice try, but sorry, no. Just an illustrator who actually looked inside a book.

By: novakant

novakant — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:59:48 +0000

Speaking of Karl May and the imagined Wild West, it’s hard to top this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw6sKPk2_4g

Yeah, that’s the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, Winnetou is French (Nscho-tschi too) and Old Shatterhand used to be Tarzan.

By: jacob

jacob — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:09:02 +0000

There was a This American Life episode in August in which Chuck Klosterman read an excerpt of an essay he wrote for Esquire about the crazy ideas Germans have of Americans—particularly the cowboys.

Also, Winna’s Thurber quotation made me feel significantly less grumpy than I had been feeling.

By: Ginger Yellow

Ginger Yellow — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 12:49:14 +0000

While not denying the weirdness of some aspects of the cover, I’m far from convinced it’s supposed to be associating particular images with particular places. Indeed, the only evidence that it is is the placement of the cameraman in California. Could it not just be things that were stereotypically associated with America, placed on the page so as to fit more or less around the text?

By: Tony

Tony — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 10:37:37 +0000

Nabokov’s topographical sketch of Ulysses with ‘England’ about a mile off the Irish coast.

http://www.fathom.com/course/10701032/104_ulysses_lg.html

By: notsneaky

notsneaky — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 08:40:44 +0000

The prison and the identification with the characters had a common cause. He first got noticed for the stories he wrote while in prison, where he wound up for being crazy. Then he got out, continued being crazy, and wrote “Winnetou” believing that he was actually writing of his personal experiences in the American West. Either way, great book.

By: john holbo

john holbo — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 08:34:54 +0000

Yeah, Karl May. I can forgive him for not researching his subject better since he was in prison, wasn’t he?