When someone like Johnny Depp says American culture is a disaster, you take it with a pinch of salt. After all, it's not as if Pirates of the Caribbean is the apogee of film-making, even though the adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow are among the highest-grossing movies yet.
But it seems Depp's is not the only voice of dissent. Recently, the critic Lee Siegel, writing in the New York Observer, declared American fiction "culturally irrelevant". On Tuesday, the prestigious London bookshop Foyles will hold an event with the headline-grabbing title, "Is America Over?" Leaving aside the rather amusing notion of an entire country being treated as if it were a fly-by-night cultural trend, the concerns are real. And Siegel's piece has caused a veritable storm.
Its headline - "Where have all the Mailers gone?" - speared the heart of the problem. By that Siegel really meant: "Where has the Great American Novel gone?" Norman Mailer truly believed in this concept; a perfect work of fiction that could somehow meld the private lives of its characters with broad "state of America" themes. The bigger the book, the better, too.
And since the 1960s, the Great American Novel has become the mighty beast that stalks any new American novelist with pretensions to being filed under literary fiction. It hasn't helped that America has, until recently, enjoyed something of a purple patch in the genre, thanks to John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth and Don DeLillo. The problem is, most of these literary giants have either died or begun to lose their powers. And there's no one, according to Siegel, to take their place. Moreover, he argued, "the most interesting, perceptive and provocative writers of our moment write narrative non-fiction".
Has Siegel got a point? Will Richard Russo, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who is the main draw at Foyles, side with the notion of "the fall of the 21st-century Babylon"?
Certainly any previous fascination with American literature was representative of the broader dominance of American culture. But the dismay caused by the George W Bush years, combined with the incessant globalisation that sees the country's brands in every shopping mall across the world, may have dulled the allure of the American Dream. And if the rest of the planet feels strangely ambivalent about America, it perhaps follows that American novelists themselves will also be unsure about how to define their culture.
It's not that American writers aren't still keen to write about big themes. This year, Dave Eggers took on one of the greatest natural, economic and social disasters in America's history with his Hurricane Katrina book Zeitoun, but it was just the kind of narrative non-fiction that Siegel believes is now the dominant force in the country's writing.
Adam Haslett's debut novel, Union Atlantic, takes on the excesses of the banking system. It is a fascinating and at times enthralling book. But at just 300 pages, it's not the epic Siegel and many others clearly miss.
Perhaps that's why there's so much such excitement around the September publication of Jonathan Franzen's first novel in nine years. His book The Corrections, published in 2001, is regularly cited as one of this century's most important books. The story of a dysfunctional American family, it seemed to nail America at a time of great change. His new work, Freedom, appears to cover similar ground, but it'll be interesting to see how he deals with a world that has changed so much in the interval between the books.
It's a change that Philip Roth, for one, blames on the internet. He was probably having a bit of fun when he predicted that in 25 years, attention spans will have shrunk so much the audience for novels will have dwindled to those for Latin poetry today. But there was an interesting subtext to his comments. Perhaps this snappy, hyper-connected, fast-paced world is shaping the kind of literature we get.
The notion of fine-tuning a doorstop epic about America over a period of years is probably alien to the young writers who featured on The New Yorker's "20 under 40" list of young novelists: the initial subject of Siegel's ire. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Jonathan Safran Foer - to name two on that list - are different kinds of writers from those Americans may have been used to hailing in the past. But in writing perceptively about the world as a whole, they prove America isn't over. It's just different, and, whisper it, perhaps just a little less self-obsessed.
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Election pledges on migration
CDU: "Now is the time to control the German borders and enforce strict border rejections"
SPD: "Border closures and blanket rejections at internal borders contradict the spirit of a common area of freedom"
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
The specs
Engine: 1.5-litre turbo
Power: 181hp
Torque: 230Nm
Transmission: 6-speed automatic
Starting price: Dh79,000
On sale: Now
The specs
Engine: Long-range single or dual motor with 200kW or 400kW battery
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Max touring range: 620km / 590km
Price: From Dh250,000 (estimated)
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
What is the Supreme Petroleum Council?
The Abu Dhabi Supreme Petroleum Council was established in 1988 and is the highest governing body in Abu Dhabi’s oil and gas industry. The council formulates, oversees and executes the emirate’s petroleum-related policies. It also approves the allocation of capital spending across state-owned Adnoc’s upstream, downstream and midstream operations and functions as the company’s board of directors. The SPC’s mandate is also required for auctioning oil and gas concessions in Abu Dhabi and for awarding blocks to international oil companies. The council is chaired by Sheikh Khalifa, the President and Ruler of Abu Dhabi while Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, is the vice chairman.
The UAE's journey to space
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
Specs
Engine: Dual-motor all-wheel-drive electric
Range: Up to 610km
Power: 905hp
Torque: 985Nm
Price: From Dh439,000
Available: Now
More from Neighbourhood Watch:
RESULTS
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The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
Torque: 450Nm at 6,100rpm
Transmission: 7-speed PDK auto or 6-speed manual
Fuel economy, combined: 13.8L/100km
On sale: Available to order now
In Full Flight: A Story of Africa and Atonement
John Heminway, Knopff
Test
Director: S Sashikanth
Cast: Nayanthara, Siddharth, Meera Jasmine, R Madhavan
Star rating: 2/5
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
Malcolm & Marie
Directed by: Sam Levinson
Starring: John David Washington and Zendaya
Three stars
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
Analysis
Members of Syria's Alawite minority community face threat in their heartland after one of the deadliest days in country’s recent history. Read more
How to report a beggar
Abu Dhabi – Call 999 or 8002626 (Aman Service)
Dubai – Call 800243
Sharjah – Call 065632222
Ras Al Khaimah - Call 072053372
Ajman – Call 067401616
Umm Al Quwain – Call 999
Fujairah - Call 092051100 or 092224411
At a glance
Global events: Much of the UK’s economic woes were blamed on “increased global uncertainty”, which can be interpreted as the economic impact of the Ukraine war and the uncertainty over Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Growth forecasts: Cut for 2025 from 2 per cent to 1 per cent. The OBR watchdog also estimated inflation will average 3.2 per cent this year
Welfare: Universal credit health element cut by 50 per cent and frozen for new claimants, building on cuts to the disability and incapacity bill set out earlier this month
Spending cuts: Overall day-to day-spending across government cut by £6.1bn in 2029-30
Tax evasion: Steps to crack down on tax evasion to raise “£6.5bn per year” for the public purse
Defence: New high-tech weaponry, upgrading HM Naval Base in Portsmouth
Housing: Housebuilding to reach its highest in 40 years, with planning reforms helping generate an extra £3.4bn for public finances
