ABSTRACT
A well-known English anthropologist, reviewing an exhibition of American paintings for a most respectable London Sunday paper, explained the 'mediocrity of American painting' by a reference to 'the uniformity of the American landscape, all prairie and desert'. Well-informed Europeans have heard that this country's political life is founded on pluralism and that our religious organization knows no rules, though they seldom seem to realize that these facts alone deny the legend of American uniformity. Most of them, however, believe that this country has uniformity in education. Even less compatible with the myth of American uniformity is the reality of American literature, and if education is the matrix of society, literature is its truest reflection. There is actually more uniformity in European countries, both materially and culturally, than in the United States. The European myth of American uniformity tells us less about America than about Europe.
