What are the numinous elements in, say, downtown Manhattan, or the Financial District of San Francisco, or even downtown Pocatello, Idaho?
I'll suggest, actually, that there are largely none. American history is so tightly bound up in actual history that supernatural claims are almost always tacked on, as you correctly put it. Which is why no book of "American" fantasy has gone very far -- because, as a nation, we simply don't have the dizzying mysticism of Europe. We have no goblins in our forests. We have no dwarves in our mountains. We have no dragons in our lakes. We are amongst the most materialist nations on earth, which is why when we go for fantasy we overwhelmingly go for a pastiche of European feudalism, which is sufficiently removed and yet culturally relevant to us to provide background for fantasy elements.
(The reason why First People's fantasy has never taken off is because for most of us there is far less resonance between ourselves and that sort of mythology than ourselves and European mythology and legendry.)
The closest we Americans get to legitimate fantasy mythology as a culturally relevant form is more science-fiction, really: conspiracy theory. Our mythology, insofar as we have one, as to do with aliens from the stars and vast conspiracies to dominate the world than traditional fantasy. I could probably go on about why that is, too, if a body was interested. ;)
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Date: 2007-07-16 04:22 am (UTC)I'll suggest, actually, that there are largely none. American history is so tightly bound up in actual history that supernatural claims are almost always tacked on, as you correctly put it. Which is why no book of "American" fantasy has gone very far -- because, as a nation, we simply don't have the dizzying mysticism of Europe. We have no goblins in our forests. We have no dwarves in our mountains. We have no dragons in our lakes. We are amongst the most materialist nations on earth, which is why when we go for fantasy we overwhelmingly go for a pastiche of European feudalism, which is sufficiently removed and yet culturally relevant to us to provide background for fantasy elements.
(The reason why First People's fantasy has never taken off is because for most of us there is far less resonance between ourselves and that sort of mythology than ourselves and European mythology and legendry.)
The closest we Americans get to legitimate fantasy mythology as a culturally relevant form is more science-fiction, really: conspiracy theory. Our mythology, insofar as we have one, as to do with aliens from the stars and vast conspiracies to dominate the world than traditional fantasy. I could probably go on about why that is, too, if a body was interested. ;)
Just my 2 cents. ;)