Any discussion of the arts and culture of the United States would result in a dish as rich and tasty as a Louisiana jambalaya. Stephen Foster, Anne Bradstreet, Frank Capra, Louis Armstrong, Mark Twain, Bob Dylan, Andrew Wyeth, and Ray Bradbury: That inventory hardly scratches the surface of the living and dead musicians, artists, writers, poets, and others who have shaped American culture at large.
Then, there is the definition of culture as the customs and beliefs of a particular people living in a particular place. In American culture are subsets of such people and places. Neither Boston nor Atlanta would name their football team the “Cowboys.” The experiences of an insurance salesman born and raised in Queens, New York City, will differ radically when compared to his counterpart in Boise, Idaho. Writers John Cheever and Flannery O’Connor were both mid-20th century authors, but the “Chekov of the suburbs” and the “Queen of Southern Gothic” were poles apart in the themes and styles of their fiction.
