What are the influences that American dream has brought to American writers?

Answer 1

The "American Dream" is a political construct. It has been formalised by James Truslow Adams in his 1931 essay The Epic of America. It is largely self-deception. The basic idea is that by working hard and being good citizens everyone can share in the indefinite growth that is assumed to be the American birthright. That being upwardly mobile and having disposable income is both achievable and the destiny of everyone on the continent.

The concept has survived - through a multitude of changes - because it is easy to whip up and is sustained through advertising for consumer goods and the attitudes of both US political parties. It has meant whatever the speaker wanted it to mean. It is a lie now, as it was a lie then.

The English do not need such a dream - they are a nation of shopkeepers, after all - and would probably be deeply suspicious of anyone who tried to peddle it to them. Oh, at times in history they have had a collective image, most noticably in the immediate post-war years when a collective sense of achievement and optimism about the future combined with a sort of Vera Lynn driven nostalgia for country cottages and roses over the door. A whole generation had only to say "Spitfire Summer" to go all dreamy.

It is true that the English have no current, coherent, self-image. Attempts to create one, Such as John Major's disastrous 'Ladies bicycling to evensong' speech, end in confusion or ridicule. Attempts to find them, such as books by Paxman or Bird have come to no firm conclusion, any more than American Author Bill Bryson managed. The search is not helped by the English themselves, or by the staggering confusion over Britishness, or the status of 3rd generation west Indian or Ugandan Asian descendents who themselves disagree about where they fit.

There really seems to be no such thing as an Englishman: There are Yorkshiremen, Lancastrians, East Anglians, Cornishmen, Hampshire Hogs and Lincolnshire Yellowbellies. We were all British until Tony Blair gave large chunks of the union self-determination. We are told, with little effect, that we are all Europeans now.

How can there be an English Dream when we have no confidence in the future, in our politicians, and our nation: when we have no clear idea of who we are, or where we are going?

I cannot speak for the Japanese. I am English. But I would say that anyone who tried to create a UK analogue of the facile, simplistic, and self-evidently false 'American Dream' would find themselves ridiculed in Tomorrow's headlines, and by the same evening wrapping the fish-and-chips.