continues to defy cultural boundaries. ©AP Images
American culture no longer belongs to America, and in truth it never did. Different types of American pop culture have roots in other cultures’ traditions: Musical comedy owes its provenance to European opera; jazz came out of New Orleans by way of the Caribbean and, before that, Africa; and the trail of detective fiction winds back through the quintessentially British Sherlock Holmes to Poe’s oddly French Inspector Dupin, to Dickens’ Inspector Bucket from Bleak House.
(Pamphlet, 2 pgs.)