Plan B Forum

So I've been listening to "Something Wicked Thisway Comes" and I have been struck by two things first the beauty of the writing. Second as I think of one day sharing it with my son that it seems the times have changed so much that the world described within may be completely unrelatable to him by the time he is old enough to read it.

Has "Americana" lost its relavance?

Has it ever really had relavance?

Ask a native American...

Crackpot wrote:
Has "Americana" lost its relavance?

Not if you did the crossword last week -- it was one of the answers! But that then begs the question of whether crossword puzzles have lost their relevance.

I do at least one crossword puzzle everyday (Newsdays puzzle) and I have a book of puzzles in case Newsdays was too easy (under 15 minutes like todays which was 10 minutes).

Just because something is not modern doesn't mean its not interesting, entertaining, and possibly relevant. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Does it have to be relevant to be enjoyable? I don't think so. Beautiful writing is beautiful writing, no matter the subject.

I'm talking of the loss of relay ability upon listening to it it seems to be something completely foreign to childhood today

Crackpot wrote:So I've been listening to "Something Wicked Thisway Comes" and I have been struck by two things first the beauty of the writing. Second as I think of one day sharing it with my son that it seems the times have changed so much that the world described within may be completely unrelatable to him by the time he is old enough to read it.

Has "Americana" lost its relavance?

Teaching moments/hours/days/weeks for you with your son.
The world has changed so much just since I was a child. Heck, even from when my kids were children (23 and 27 now). They can't believe there were only 7 channels on the TV (less if you didn't live within range of NY city) that a phone was "hard wired" and that there were no computers. I tried to tell them that when they were young, phones were still hard wired, that there were no PC's in peoples houses and that even cable had much less than 20 channels.

Going further back just makes it all the more interesting for him hopefully.

Crackpot wrote:I'm talking of the loss of relay ability upon listening to it it seems to be something completely foreign to childhood today

The lessons are pretty much the same, how they learn them might have changed and you can help point out the differences and the similarities.
How old "fun" can still be relevant and even a lot of fun doing it the same way as then.

Guinevere wrote:Just because something is not modern doesn't mean its not interesting, entertaining, and possibly relevant. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Does it have to be relevant to be enjoyable? I don't think so. Beautiful writing is beautiful writing, no matter the subject.

I don't dispute that, I do dispute the use of the term Americana in the sense that it is referring to US history only because the US has it's origins in foreign lands so do the Americas for that matter. Actual Native artifacts are simply display items any more...

keld feldspar wrote:

Guinevere wrote:Just because something is not modern doesn't mean its not interesting, entertaining, and possibly relevant. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Does it have to be relevant to be enjoyable? I don't think so. Beautiful writing is beautiful writing, no matter the subject.

I don't dispute that, I do dispute the use of the term Americana in the sense that it is referring to US history only because the US has it's origins in foreign lands so do the Americas for that matter. Actual Native artifacts are simply display items any more...

I wasn't discussing the use of the term "Americana." But I do think your comment is both right and wrong -- there were natives and there are natives now. The two are not the same, but at some point, aren't we - the newcomers -- still "Americans?" My family has been here for almost 300 years. We have no ties or context about our past English life except we speak the American form of the language, we have an English name, and we have a some sense of understanding of our past history. But we have lived and died and served and sworn oaths and pledges and allegiance to America, not England.

Although the world changes, I don't think literature becomes unrelatable; we just relate in different ways. People still read and relate to the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, the Canterbury Tales and Midsummer Night's Dream (I was going to say "Hamlet," but nobody actually relates to Hamlet.) Ray Bradbury's world in Something Wicked was already long outdated when I was reading him in the late 1960s -- as were Poe's, Hawthorne's and Austen's -- but a good story is always a good story, and telling it with a beautiful use of language makes it all the more savory.

outdated yes but still relatable. life hadn't changed so much that the idea of the world described in it hadn't faded from the collective consiousness. Heck it positivley helped the nostalgic bent of the story. but now I wonder just how much would remain relevant in the minds of children in the near furture. Heck the "picture show" would now be considered a sex crime. It seems to me the only things that remain relevant is (hopefully) friendship and creepy carnies. (and with the later the freakshow is all but defunct)