I am proud to be an American. I believe we have a rich and interesting heritage, I really do. It is for that reason that I can be SO INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATED by what novels, films, and ideas get exported to the rest of the world.
To give you some comparison here: You go to Barnes and Noble, and you want to buy a popular Russian novel. What are you going to pick up? Contenders for the top spot would be War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, Anna Karenina. Maybe Doctor Zhivago or One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. I'm sure my brother would have some obscure philosophical piece he'd like to get his hands on. My point, generally speaking, is that they export LITERATURE.
I was in the English language section of a bookstore recently, since I'm always curious to see what they sell from America. Mark Twain? Nope. Steinbeck? No. Hemingway? F. Scott Fitzgerald? Vonnegut? I'm not even picky about the genre at this point, but can you give me a classic? No. BUT I can get every installment of Twilight in English or in Russian. (And of Harry Potter, but that is both more legitimate and not American.)
And then I realize why foreigners (or even, sadly enough, many young Americans I know) think we have neither brains nor culture.
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