Топик: Arts

- What can you tell us about American cultural life?

- American culture has produced many outstanding writers, filmmakers, and musicians. The country's 19th-century literature was dominated by such names as Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Рое, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Henry James. Among the great American writers of the 20th century were Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The dramatists Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams. The poets Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and Robert Frost were popular too.

- What is one of the USA most popular and internationally influential art forms?

- One of the country's most popular and internationally influential art forms has been the motion picture. American filmmakers such as Charlie Chaplin, Howard Hawks, Orson Welles, Frank Capra, John Ford, John Huston, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg gained world fame for cinematic artistry.

- What music types have been developed in the USA?

- The country has developed several distinctive and highly influential types of popular music: jazz, the blues, country and western, and rock and roll. The most important performers have included Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, and John Coltrane in jazz; Muddy Waters in the blues, Hank Williams in country and western, and Elvis Presley in rock and roll.