But here's the thing. I think of a book like Gatsby as "literary fiction," and I just don't read literary fiction, other than the occasional short story in TNY. I do believe I've read a Hemingway and a Fitzgerald story in TNY.
Literary fiction is the
only kind of fiction I like. That said, I don't read much fiction these days.
I don't think it was your bad. I thought of all those women, but for some reason I thought you meant the "rise" of Country Music, so I just mentioned the Carters because I had the impression that Mother Maybelle Carter was really important in the beginnings of the genre.
I still take responsibility, but I agree with you about the earliest country music and the Carters. Years ago, I bought a four-disc album in Nashville called
The History of Country Music and it contained a creaky old (1928, per Wikipedia) recording of "Keep on the Sunny Side of Life" by the Carter Family.
I guess The Civil War "made" Ken Burns, but I've never seen that, either--because that episode of American history never really interested me much. I would watch it now if PBS ever broadcast it again. I've also not watched his series on baseball because that subject didn't really interest me, either. I can't say why I watched The Roosevelts, but I know I watched Vietnam because I "lived" through it. I remember Kent State, after all.
You weren't interested in the Civil War era? Oh, for some reason I thought you were. Weren't you a reenactor for a while, or am I imagining that? And I guess when I think of reenactors I mainly think of the Civil War.
I was living in NOLA when
The Civil War first aired, and it inspired me to write a package of stories about how various groups felt about the war. I interviewed Sons of and Daughters of the Confederacy, Black Civil War buffs, historian Stephen Ambrose (who taught at Tulane) and I can't remember who else. My main memory was of a woman sitting in a dining room under an approximately 4X6 painting of Robert E. Lee (I
know I've told this before, but ...), informing me that slaves loved their masters because the masters were nice enough to provide them with room and board.
An editor deleted that part, because she felt it would make the woman "look foolish." Um, yeah, that's pretty much what's wrong with that attitude but nevertheless a lot of people still hold it.
Anyway! I tried to watch it again a couple of years and now I found it too slow. My tastes have changed over 30 years, I guess. I liked
Jazz and
Baseball, loved
The Roosevelts but felt it contained about 20% more information than I needed (he should do two versions of everything -- one for popular viewing and one as historical record). I also loved
Vietnam and don't remember considering that one too informative. In fact, I was amazed at how informative it was, considering it was an era I lived through. Those recordings of Nixon gloating to Kissinger about how well he'd lied!
