Happy Independence Day

I put down Middlemarch temporarily. I’ve read like three other books since I started it; there are ~100 pages left, but I’ve taken up Main Street by Sinclair Lewis in the meantime. Reading an American novel is like a breath of fresh air.


Happy Independence day, everyone.



Fittingly, I am reenacting the American Revolution through my reading choices, and as in a mystery play entering into and partaking of that eternal moment; in a mystical recapitulation of it i am declaring my own independence from the domineering British literary canon. Indeed, I vindicate my nation through this individual act of will, and I throw a little pebble in the face of that implacable force which governs the fate of great events, and which must become a deadly hail if each patriot will know his duty and perform it, with knowledge of the necessity and propriety of supreme sacrifice for the good of the nation.


Cry about it British people, you’re not important anymore. Now it is American empire which totters in your former place, and you don’t even have the satisfaction of watching from a safe distance because your doom is inextricably bound up with ours. Indeed, America goes as the icon and avatar of the whole West—we must all fall together, because we will drag you all down with us.