Thursday, March 15, 2012

America's Characteristic Landscape


This Specimen Days post has the word LOAFER written all over it!  He calls great sights such as Yosemite, Niagara falls, and Yellowstone "great natural shows."  They aren't just landscapes, they are shows.  They provide entertainment to see.  An individual could just stare out into the landscape and experience something.  I think that is a big part of loafing, experiencing your surroundings without having to do anything but relax and watch.

I think he says that the landscape is changing, that the future destiny of these landscapes are for farms, they will no longer have the scenery of Yosemite or Yellowstone.  They will be taken over by "maize, wool, flax, coal, iron..."  At the end of the post he says that the prairies will remain with him. Maybe it is that he will forever remember their beauty and that farms cannot destroy his image of the beautiful scenery.  Either way, I think he is talking about the changes in America, the way it is becoming more materialistic.  He is talking about people's need for "things" but he will not forget that "their simplest statistics are sublime."

1 comment:

  1. Very interesting . . yes, there's some sense in which the loafer sees all, especially the city, as spectacle and pageant . . . even nature! A lot like what the french would later label - - the "flaneur" . . .

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