interesting Americans

Since my arrival in Leipzig, I have continually been reminded about the way many Germans view American culture. They essentially feel it does not exist. One grad student only half jokingly told me that an entire semester of American cultural studies "should probably take about twenty-five minutes." But this, of course, is crazy. Now more than ever, I feel certain that the United States is as good at manufacturing culture as the rest of the world combined, probably because we often do so accidentally. A lack of culture is not our problem. The problem is we've become too effective at distributing that culture -- at the same time, in the same way, and with the same velocity. It all ends up feeling interchangeable, which makes it all marginally irrelevant. As it turns out, my initial question was beyond impossible. There are no interesting twentieth-century Americans. There can't be, because they all are.

--Chuck Klosterman

This was the concluding paragraph of a short article to be found here. Comment about Ryan Adams: fabulous (you can find the Adams lines quoted on Luke's blog--see left).