Well with regards to some of the writers you listed - Eliot became British, Pound and Hemingway wrote some of their best work whilst travelling through Europe. Whilst Williams was heavily influenced in his work by his British upbringing and Fitzgerald's writing was influenced by Paris and the European jazz movement of the 1920's...
For most of the 1920's, jazz hadn't even pervaded most of America outside of Chicago and the Deep South, nor would it make the transition from Dixieland to big band until much later in the decade. What European jazz movement of the 1920's, outside of a teenage Django Reinhardt (who was effectively a ragtime musician for his early career and not a jazz musician per se anyway)?
My bad, I'm confusing myself again... I must admit, the era within Paris was heavily influenced if not started by African Americans and Americans after the first world war... Although the relationship between Pound, FSF and Hemingway and their experiences in the city of lights was reciprocal imo. One could not have been without the other etc etc... But of course, the best era for Parisian jazz was post WWII. When again, one could argue the same American kickstart.
Ok, I'm going to have to disagree on Hemingway. While his experiences with the Paris expatriate community undoubtedly were an influence (and one you're no doubt eager to assert being a PSG supporter ), I'd argue that nothing in his European travels influenced him as much as the Spanish Civil War. Hey, I am, after all, madridista.
I'll agree with this, although I'll add that Eliot's Britishness contained some rather silly affectation (e.g., the fake Queen's English accent, which wasn't quite as silly as Pound's affected Northumbrian accent). On the flip side, Auden spent a lot of time in the states, and Joyce lived just about everywhere in Europe outside of Ireland for much of his life.
They are heavy caliber more than anything USA produced so... (referring to the first 50 yrs of 20th century) and that etc. etc. hides some others. For example Proust, Joyce, Bulgakov or Kafka alone make their country contribution heavier. I know, I know this has also a lot to do with personal tastes. Also the couple Hesse, Mann is tough. Add to it Bertolt Brecht... I can give you Italy even though we should get credit for futurism and all its following developments. And even if we produced my preferred poet ever, Ungaretti (though i admit I am not a poetry guy) with his hermeticism. Ungaretti deserves much more credit worldwide IMO. I guess it could be US time nowadays if I really had a good knowledge of current literature.
France based an entire 30 years of literary development on Faulkner. Personal taste has little to do with it. Either you're aware that the American novel revolutionized European narrative art..or you're not. Now who wants to talk about the dominance of American cinema?
Proust is unquestionably lighter caliber than any of the American authors I mentioned. Don't get me wrong--there are wonderful moments in Proust--but there are also 50-page arguments about whether Madame So-and-So is really an aristocrat, and the 100 pages that follow Albertine's death are so cloying and cliched that I wanted to beat my own head in with a hammer. Proust is sublime on the subjects of aging and jealousy and when he raptures about the beauty of a simple object; he's also extremely gossipy, he treats important events as fodder for cocktail party discussions, and he often emphasizes surfaces over interiors. Joyce, however, is the greatest writer of the 20th century. As far as the Germans go: Hesse? He's the German Salinger. Mann is great. Brecht is quite important. Right now, I don't think it is. It's hard to tell where the most important literature is coming from. For the second half of the 20th century, I'll lump together all of the Latin American countries and give their writers the award (e.g., Vallejo, Marquez, Neruda, Alberti, Andrade, and the greatest writer since WWII, Borges). Furthermore, while the French invented surrealist poetry, it took Wallace Stevens and the south Americans to turn it into something interesting and to give it emotional resonance.
As long as we get to bring up Battlefield Earth, Ishtar, Gigli, Waterworld, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, etc.
To get back to the original question -- why is America so religious -- I would answer it is because since independence, we never had a national established church (though some states, nominally, had established churches until the 1820s). For this reason, religion (and the religious beliefs of the populace) worked itself out.
Friedel's accent is pretty hilarious. What was funny about Eliot's and Pound's fake accents is that they weren't merely affected/learned English accents, but they were region- and class-specific learned accents. Pound sounds as if he's trudging through the moors, and Eliot sounds as if he's readying for a fox hunt.
agreed on all points. just because there's a lot to do in the US doesn't mean that's all you ever need to do. and i'm sorry, but once you've been to one midwestern state, you've pretty much seen them all. i was in london for 4 months and didn't soak up all the culture i wanted to. i could be in ohio for a week and experience everything they have to offer. (no offense to the native ohioans) there is truly something about experiencing other cultures that is just not had by staying in your own little confines simply because "it's a big place". i think what the thread starter was implying is that americans are very isolated in their world view. when you watch the news in england or france, they actually have world news. not just what happened in that city or state or country. it's just the opposite in america. here in columbus is the worst. they can't report on ANYTHING in the news without tying it to columbus somehow. if someone gets hit by lightening in florida they'll spend 2 seconds on the actual story, and 5 minutes on how the guy that got hit was the cousin of a next door neighbor of the daughter of someone from columbus. we're very me, me, me. this may have something to do with the religion thing too. maybe you just hear about the religious here because we're more vocal about ourselves and our activities (especially the protestants). i grew up catholic. it wasn't something you necessarily advertised. much of europe is catholic. it isn't like the religious right here where every t shirt you own is from a church camp you went to or a bible week your church had.
Let's not forget - one aspect of culture is the amalgamation of historical events and associations within a society, and though the USA does not like to admit it, the history of this country (Indian culture notwithstanding, since early Americans did a good job of erasing that) doesn't go back nearly as far the history of virtually all other countries in the world. And all the history that immigrants brought to this country from other countries has been diluted and melded with other cultures to a large extent.
Although that might have something to do with it, the reason America is so religious is hardly because of the initial settlers of the New World. The religions you refer to were very clandestine, hardly evangelical. The groups you mention were largely concerned with cleaning their own house more than spreading their message. In fact, the Puritan believed themselves to be predestined, and that the cause of others were hopeless. And some of the others, Quakers and Catholics for instance, would not have been able to influence the country in any way, largely because they were discriminated against. The Quakers were never really large enough to have an influence. But the Catholics, despite comprising a large section of American Christianity today, were discriminated against in the 13 Colonies (I believe Maryland was the only colony which accepted them, since it was started by Catholics), and for the first 100 years or so in the Republic, anti-Catholic sentiment was palpable. Political parties such as the Know-Nothings included anti-Catholicism as a large part of their platform. The real cause of religion as we know it in America came from the First and Second Great Awakenings. This is where the Baptist and Methodist churches first started, since they appealed to the poorer peoples of the south. These religions are also much more evangelical in nature than most American religions had been up to that time. Consequently, these religions grew at a much quicker rate, and embedded themselves into the American psyche. Slaves also adopted this form of religion, and after their emancipation brought their own evangelical brand of religion into America. As pointed out earlier, there were large factions of people who were NOT religious. Most of the west was settled by French fur trappers, many of the colonies (Jamestown for instance) were settled by largely non-religous people; they were mainly poor and disenfranchised. And the entire colony of Georgia was founded by a philanthropist as a haven for debtors in England.