One of the sharpest chains of causality I have read about this was written by Leonard Peikoff in “Ominous Parallels”. Kant was a reaction to the Age of Reason. The Germans took Kant, stripped him of his niceties and created Ficte and Hegel and German Romanticism. Marx emerged from this line and with it a disdain for the Bourgeoisie. Meanwhile, in the US mid/late 19th Century, with an exploding Bourgeoisie, a certain “upper crust” came into being anyway. They had Europe-envy. It became highly fashionable for the sons of ‘society’ to study in Europe. Guess what they studied.
American literature has either been indistinguishable from that disgorged in this European flavor, or else “So American” (Bourgeois values) that it must be ridiculed by an intelligentsia still flying those German Romantic/Marxian colors. The philosophy and politics are woven into the aesthetic value judgement, such as voiced above by the punch-drunk Mr. Engdahl.
John Donohue
Pasadena, CA
