Writer-in-Residence: Americans Suffer from 'Amnesia'
September 19, 2013
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In a piece in the Los Angeles Times, University of Baltimore writer-in-residence Arthur Magida explores his greatest pet peeve: the "cultural and historical amnesia of Americans." What prompted his critique? Hearing the Bob Dylan song "Oxford Town" over the speakers in a New Jersey rest stop named for Walt Whitman.
"A few weeks ago, we commemorated the 50th anniversary of the civil rights March on Washington. Next month is the 51st anniversary of the riot at Ole Miss. William Faulkner, who lived in Oxford, famously wrote: 'The past is never dead. It's not even past,'" magida writes. "That's true—most of the time. The past is past—a temporal corpse, if you will—when we've never heard of it, when the events that preceded us are unknown or long forgotten, when the demands of today push out the whispers and lessons of yesterday."
Read the piece.
Learn more about Arthur Magida.