Is this where I say #booksky ?

So what are the qualities of an American tragedy? Presently it feels like we’re in the downward spiral of peripeteia with no recognition whatsoever.

I’m new to Blue Sky. Where are my tragedians and aesthetes at???

Paul Murray once summarized the difference between audiences at a Greek Tragedy and a Shakespearean tragedy thus: the Greeks would have responded “It’s a shame, it had to happen that way.” Shakespeare’a audience would have said, “it’s a shame, it could have been different.”

I realize how dogmatic and reductive all this is. It sounds like the convictions of a young person.

Think of when Macbeth recognizes his hubris while dueling Macduff. Or Oedipus realizes his wife is his mother and he blinds himself. Look for this moment of recognition in an American story. It’s actually somewhat rare.

For a time, because of Baldwin, the presence or absence of tragedy was my acid test on the culture I consumed — books, movies, shows. Specifically thinking of Aristotle’s ideas of anagnorisis, the moment of recognition of a tragic flaw, and peripeteia, the reversal of fortune and downfall.

I remember reading this passage when I was 21. I must have vaguely differentiated the term tragedy as being conceptually different than “bad shit happening to good people”. But i don’t think I’d ever applied that poetic lens to my culture, its politics or literature, ever before.

Nobody Knows My Name - James Baldwin