The American Self

In today's New York Times, Joyce Carol Oates opened her review on Curtis Sittenfeld's newest book, "American Wife," with a discussion on what it means to describe something as "American." What makes an ordinary something "extraordinary," being that it has "American characteristics?"

This is the perfect topic in light of so much "patriotism talk" in this season's elections, so much talk of "the American promise," "the American legacy," "American values," and "the American spirit."

But what exactly do they mean? How do we identify ourselves? How are we distinct from the "Chinese something," or "French something," or "English something?"

More importantly how do YOU identify yourself? And what do you think "American" means?

Before you answer, here is what Oates wrote:

"Is there a distinctly American experience? "The American," by Henry James; "An American Tragedy," by Theodore Dreiser; "The Quiet American," by Graham Greene; "The Ugly American," by William Lederer and Eugene Burdick; Philip Roth's "American Pastoral" and Bret Easton Ellis's "American Psycho" — each suggests, in its very title, a mythic dimension in which fictitious characters are intended to represent national types or predilections. Our greatest 19th-century prose writers from Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville through Henry James and Mark Twain took it for granted that "American" is an identity fraught with ambiguity, as in those allegorical parables by Hawthorne in which "good" and "evil" are mysteriously conjoined; to be an "American" is to be a kind of pilgrim, an archetypal seeker after truth. Though destined to be thwarted, even defeated, the pilgrim is our deepest and purest American self."

Please feel free to leave a comment, whether you are American or not.