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| U.S. Culturelegacy of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction left the South with a sense of a lost civilization, embodied in popular literature such as Gone With the Wind (1936) by Margaret Mitchell, and with questions about how a Southern experience could frame a literary legacy. Southern literature in the 20th century draws deeply on distinct speech rhythms, undercurrents of sin, and painful reflections on evil as part of a distinctly Southern tradition. William Faulkner most fully expressed these issues in a series of brilliant and difficult novels set in a fictional Mississippi county. These novels, most of them published in the 1930s, include The Sound and the Fury (1929), Light in August (1932), and Absalom, Absalom (1936). For his contribution, Faulkner received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1949. More recent Southern writers, such as Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, James Dickey, and playwright Tennessee Williams, have continued this tradition of Southern literature. In addition to expressing the minority consciousness of Southern regionalism, Faulkner's novels also reflected the artistic modernism of 20th-century literature, in which reality gave way to frequent interruptions of fantasy and the writing is characterized by streams of consciousness rather than by precise sequences in time. Other American writers, such as Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and E. L. Doctorow also experimented with different novel forms and tried to make their writing styles reflect the peculiarities of consciousness in the chaos of the modern world. Doctorow, for example, in his novel Ragtime juxtaposed real historical events and people with those he made up. Pynchon questioned the very existence of reality in The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) and Gravity’s Rainbow (1973). Aside from Faulkner, perhaps the greatest modernist novelist writing in the United States was йmigrй Vladimir Nabokov. Nabokov first wrote in his native Russian, and then in French, before settling in the United States and writing in English. Nabokov saw no limits to the possibilities of artistic imagination, and he believed the artist's ability to manipulate language could be expressed through any subject. In a series of novels written in the United States, Nabokov demonstrated that he could develop any situation, even the most alien and forbidden, to that end. This was demonstrated in Lolita (1955), a novel about sexual obsession that caused a sensation and was first banned as obscene. Despite its obvious achievements, modernism in the United States had its most profound effect on other forms of literature, especially in poetry and in a new kind of personal journalism that gradually erased the sharp distinctions between news reporting, personal reminiscence, and fiction writing. 20th-Century Poetry Modern themes and styles of poetry have been part of the American repertoire since the early part of the 20th century, especially in the work of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Their works were difficult, emotionally restrained, full of non-American allusions, and often inaccessible. After World War II, new poetic voices developed that were more exuberant and much more American in inspiration and language. The poets who wrote after the war often drew upon the work of William Carlos Williams and returned to the legacy of Walt Whitman, which was democratic in identification and free-form in style. These poets provided postwar poetry with a uniquely American voice. The Beatnik, or Beat, poets of the 1950s notoriously followed in Whitman’s tradition. They adopted a radical ethic that included drugs, sex, art, and the freedom of the road. Jack Kerouac captured this vision in On the Road (1957), a quintessential book about Kerouac’s adventures wandering across the United States. The most significant poet in the group was Allen Ginsberg, whose sexually explicit poem Howl (1956) became the subject of a court battle after it was initially banned as obscene. The Beat poets spanned the country, but adopted San Francisco as their special outpost. The city continued to serve as an important arena for poetry and unconventional ideas, especially at the City Lights Bookstore co-owned by writer and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Other modernist poets included Gwendolyn Brooks, who retreated from the conventional forms of her early poetry to write about anger and protest among African Americans, and Adrienne Rich, who wrote poetry focused on women's rights, needs, and desires. Because it is open to expressive forms and innovative speech, modern poetry is able to convey the deep personal anguish experienced by several of the most prominent poets of the postwar period, among them Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Theodore Roethke, Anne Sexton, and John Berryman. Sometimes called confessional poets, they used poetry to express nightmarish images of self-destruction. As in painting, removing limits and conventions on form permitted an almost infinite capacity for conveying mood, feeling, pain, and inspiration. This personal poetry also brought American poetry closer to the European modernist tradition of emotional anguish and madness. Robert Frost, probably the most famous and beloved of modern American poets, wrote evocative and deeply felt poetry that conveyed some of these same qualities within a conventional pattern of meter and rhyme. Another tradition of modern poetry moved toward playful engagement with language and the creative process. This tradition was most completely embodied in the brilliant poetry of Wallace Stevens, whose work dealt with the role of creative imagination. This tradition was later developed in the seemingly simple and prosaic poetry of John Ashbery, who created unconventional works that were sometimes records of their own creation. Thus, poetry after World War II, like the visual arts, expanded the possibilities of emotional expression and reflected an emphasis on the creative process. The idea of exploration and pleasure through unexpected associations and new ways of viewing reality connected poetry to the modernism of the visual arts. Journalism Modernist sensibilities were also evident in the emergence of a new form of journalism. Journalism traditionally tried to be factual and objective in presentation. By the mid-1970s, however, some of America's most creative writers were using contemporary events to create a new form of personal reporting. This new approach stretched the boundaries of journalism and brought it closer to fiction because the writers were deeply engaged and sometimes personally involved in events. Writers such as Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, and Joan Didion created a literary journalism that infused real events with their own passion. In Armies of the Night (1968), the record of his involvement in the peace movement, Mailer helped to define this new kind of writing. Capote's In Cold Blood (1966), the retelling of the senseless killing of a Kansas family, and Mailer’s story of a murderer's fate in The Executioner's Song (1979) brought this hyperrealism to chilling consummation. No less vivid were Didion's series of essays on California culture in the late 1960s and her reporting of the sensational trial of football star O. J. Simpson in 1995. Performing Arts As in other cultural spheres, the performing arts in the United States in the 20th century increasingly blended traditional and popular art forms. The classical performing arts—music, opera, dance, and theater—were not a widespread feature of American culture in the first half of the 20th century. These arts were generally imported from or strongly influenced by Europe and were mainly appreciated by the wealthy and well educated. Traditional art usually referred to classical forms in ballet and opera, orchestral or chamber music, and serious drama. The distinctions between traditional music and popular music were firmly drawn in most areas. During the 20th century, the American performing arts began to incorporate wider groups of people. The African American community produced great musicians who became widely known around the country. Jazz and blues singers such as Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Billie Holiday spread their sounds to black and white audiences. In the 1930s and 1940s, the swing music of Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, and Glenn Miller adapted jazz to make a unique American music that was popular around the country. The American performing arts also blended Latin American influences beginning in the 20th century. Between 1900 and 1940, Latin American dances, such as the tango from Argentina and the rumba from Cuba, were introduced into the United States. In the 1940s a fusion of Latin and jazz elements was stimulated first by the Afro-Cuban mambo and later on by the Brazilian bossa nova. Throughout the 20th century, dynamic classical institutions in the United States attracted international talent. Noted Russian-born choreographer George Balanchine established the short-lived American Ballet Company in the 1930s; later he founded the company that in the 1940s would become the New York City Ballet. The American Ballet Theatre, also established during the 1940s, brought in non-American dancers as well. By the 1970s this company had attracted Soviet defector Mikhail Baryshnikov, an internationally acclaimed dancer who served as the company’s artistic director during the 1980s. In classical music, influential Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, who composed symphonies using innovative musical styles, moved to the United States in 1939. German-born pianist, composer, and conductor Andrй Previn, who started out as a jazz pianist in the 1940s, went on to conduct a number of distinguished American symphony orchestras. Another Soviet, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, became conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., in 1977. Some of the most innovative artists in the first half of the 20th century successfully incorporated new forms into classical traditions. Composers George Gershwin and Aaron Copland, and dancer Isadora Duncan were notable examples. Gershwin combined jazz and spiritual music with classical in popular works such as Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and the opera Porgy and Bess (1935). Copland developed a unique style that was influenced by jazz and American folk music. Early in the century, Duncan redefined dance along more expressive and free-form lines. Some artists in music and dance, such as composer John Cage and dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham, were even more experimental. During the 1930s Cage worked with electronically produced sounds and sounds made with everyday objects such as pots and pans. He even invented a new kind of piano. During the late 1930s, avant-garde choreographer Cunningham began to collaborate with Cage on a number of projects. Perhaps the greatest, and certainly the most popular, American innovation was the Broadway musical, which also became a movie staple. Beginning in the 1920s, the Broadway musical combined music, dance, and dramatic performance in ways that surpassed the older vaudeville shows and musical revues but without being as complex as European grand opera. By the 1960s, this American musical tradition was well established and had produced extraordinary works by important musicians and lyricists such as George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, Jerome Kern, and Oscar Hammerstein II. These productions required an immense effort to coordinate music, drama, and dance. Because of this, the musical became the incubator of an American modern dance tradition that produced some of America's greatest choreographers, among them Jerome Robbins, Gene Kelly, and Bob Fosse. In the 1940s and 1950s the American musical tradition was so dynamic that it attracted outstanding classically trained musicians such as Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein composed the music for West Side Story, an updated version of Romeo and Juliet set in New York that became an instant classic in 1957. The following year, Bernstein became the first American-born conductor to lead a major American orchestra, the New York Philharmonic. He was an international sensation who traveled the world as an ambassador of the American style of conducting. He brought the art of classical music to the public, especially through his "Young People's Concerts," television shows that were seen around the world. Bernstein used the many facets of the musical tradition as a force for change in the music world and as a way of bringing attention to American innovation. In many ways, Bernstein embodied a transformation of American music that began in the 1960s. The changes that took place during the 1960s and 1970s resulted from a significant increase in funding for the arts and their increased availability to larger audiences. New York City, the American center for art performances, experienced an artistic explosion in the 1960s and 1970s. Experimental off-Broadway theaters opened, new ballet companies were established that often emphasized modern forms or blended modern with classical (Martha Graham was an especially important influence), and an experimental music scene developed that included composers such as Philip Glass and performance groups such as the Guarneri String Quartet. Dramatic innovation also continued to expand with the works of playwrights such as Edward Albee, Tony Kushner, and David Mamet. As the variety of performances expanded, so did the serious crossover between traditional and popular music forms. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, an expanded repertoire of traditional arts was being conveyed to new audiences. Popular music and jazz could be heard in formal settings such as Carnegie Hall, which had once been restricted to classical music, while the Brooklyn Academy of Music became a venue for experimental music, exotic and ethnic dance presentations, and traditional productions of grand opera. Innovative producer Joseph Papp had been staging Shakespeare in Central Park since the 1950s. Boston conductor Arthur Fiedler was playing a mixed repertoire of classical and popular favorites to large audiences, often outdoors, with the Boston Pops Orchestra. By the mid- 1970s the United States had several world-class symphony orchestras, including those in Chicago; New York; Cleveland, Ohio; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Even grand opera was affected. Once a specialized taste that often required extensive knowledge, opera in the United States increased in popularity as the roster of respected institutions grew to include companies in Seattle, Washington; Houston, Texas; and Santa Fe, New Mexico. American composers such as John Adams and Philip Glass began composing modern operas in a new minimalist style during the 1970s and 1980s. The crossover in tastes also influenced the Broadway musical, probably America's most durable music form. Starting in the 1960s, rock music became an ingredient in musical productions such as Hair (1967). By the 1990s, it had become an even stronger presence in musicals such as Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk (1996), which used African American music and dance traditions, and Rent (1996) a modern, rock version of the classic opera La Bohиme. This updating of the musical opened the theater to new ethnic audiences who had not previously attended Broadway shows, as well as to young audiences who had been raised on rock music. Performances of all kinds have become more available across the country. This is due to both the sheer increase in the number of performance groups as well as to advances in transportation. In the last quarter of the 20th century, the number of major American symphonies doubled, the number of resident theaters increased fourfold, and the number of dance companies increased tenfold. At the same time, planes made it easier for artists to travel. Artists and companies regularly tour, and they expand the audiences for individual artists such as performance artist Laurie Anderson and opera singer Jessye Norman, for musical groups such as the Juilliard Quartet, and for dance troupes such as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Full-scale theater productions and musicals first presented on Broadway now reach cities across the country. The United States, once a provincial outpost with a limited European tradition in performance, has become a flourishing center for the performing arts. Libraries and Museums Libraries, museums, and other collections of historical artifacts have been a primary means of organizing and preserving America’s legacy. In the 20th century, these institutions became an important vehicle for educating the public about the past and for providing knowledge about the society of which all Americans are a part. Libraries Private book collections go back to the early European settlement of the New World, beginning with the founding of the Harvard University library in 1638. Colleges and universities acquire books because they are a necessary component of higher education. University libraries have many of the most significant and extensive book collections. In addition to Harvard’s library, the libraries at Yale University, Columbia University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Urbana, and the University of California in Berkeley and Los Angeles are among the most prominent, both in scope and in number of holdings. Many of these libraries also contain important collections of journals, newspapers, pamphlets, and government documents, as well as private papers, letters, pictures, and photographs. These libraries are essential for preserving America’s history and for maintaining the records of individuals, families, institutions, and other groups. Books in early America were scarce and expensive. Although some Americans owned books, Benjamin Franklin made a much wider range of books and other printed materials available to many more people when he created the first generally recognized public library in 1731. Although Franklin’s Library Company of Philadelphia loaned books only to paying subscribers, the library became the first one in the nation to make books available to people who did not own them. During the colonial period Franklin’s idea was adopted by cities such as Boston, Massachusetts; Providence, Rhode Island; and Charleston, South Carolina. These libraries set the precedent for the free public libraries that began to spread through the United States in the 1830s. Public libraries were seen as a way to encourage literacy among the citizens of the young republic as well as a means to provide education in conjunction with the public schools that were being set up at the same time. In 1848 Boston founded the first major public library in the nation. By the late 19th |
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