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The 4th American Dream

anon_zury said in #5021 5d ago: received

I would like your thought on this idea, and book recommendations. Most people think of the American Dream as "buy a house, raise a family" – but I think this is cope for what the American Dream actually represented throughout the era of America.

The main idea is that American has gone through 4 different distinct Republics. And each republic has has it's own American Dream.

1. Pre 1776.
American Dream: The New Jerusalem. An agrarian society.

2. Founding (1776 - Civil War)
- American Dream: The Open Frontier of Moby Dick. This is best explain by Hubert Dreyfus - Lecture link (https://youtu.be/eq5LDSZDr2E?si=2XoSN2GVDAzwUGhJ)

3. 1861–1933
- American Dream: The Great Gatsby, The Green Light. - Best explained by Jeffrey Steinbrink in his paper “Boats Against the Current”: Mortality and the Myth of Renewal in The Great Gatsby.
link - https://medium.com/@finnbrown_75278/boats-against-the-current-mortality-and-the-myth-of-renewal-in-the-great-gatsby-b84bfc84d42c

4. 1933–present
American Dream: this hasn't been written.
----

Under this vision, Captain Ahab and Jay Gatsby are heroes as the embody the American Dream of their time.

I would like some recs on things I should read that embody the 1st American Dream, and possibilities of the 4th American Dream.

referenced by: >>5044

I would like your th received

anon_pezu said in #5022 5d ago: received

1965-2020 probably deserves its own era. Someone else could comment on whether 1965 is closer to 2020 or 1861. And the present dream of recent decades has been written, but it's ending as Balajis has written--immigration proceeded by company success.

1965-2020 probably d received

jewishman said in #5023 5d ago: received

Updike's Rabbit.

But if that's not an acceptable answer, it's because it seems an impossible task. American literature after—throwing out names almost at random—John Dos Passos, William Carlos Williams, Steinbeck, Faulkner, and especially after the Second World War, most often seems to be about the tension between revulsion and fascination with the American dream, or it's caught between nostalgia and liberal utopianism, or it's a rejection of America entirely—I mean, in what has been canonized... After postmodernism, meta-everything, it's hard to find any figures in literature that embody anything as grand or particular as the American dream. Even trying to cast off the strictures of the literary fiction canon, that still seems true.

referenced by: >>5024

Updike's Rabbit.... received

anon_zury said in #5024 4d ago: received

>>5023
Do you have any recs on Pre 1776 books that embody the American Dream of the time (of a New Jerusalem)?

referenced by: >>5025

Do you have any recs received

jewishman said in #5025 4d ago: received

>>5024
If I had to answer, and it had to be a book, and I couldn't name a collection of New England writing or sermons, then I would say Cotton Mather's Magnalia. But I'm not the right person to ask.

If I had to answer, received

anon_bwfe said in #5045 22h ago: received

For (4) I'd like to suggest this ad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThDBf14qPsc

For (4) I'd like to received

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