Let's pick out a line from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16643/16643-h/16643-h.htm to see what he has to say:
"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist."
That's a pretty typical line. Let's set aside for now the debate on whether nonconformity is good or bad: look at the tone of the writing. It is a moral lecture. It is saying: "This is how you should think, what you should believe, how you should be." The reading allows only one interpretation. It's just beating you about the head with serious truth-claims. Another line:
"Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is Christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For everything that is given, something is taken."
Each sentence is a bland assertion. Commanding the reader what to think. I am reading a list of opinions. That is all it is: a list of opinions. This is considered peak Usan culture. It is considered to be literature or philosophy. Another line โ
"He is a good man, who can receive a gift well. We are either glad or sorry at a gift, and both emotions are unbecoming."
This is not literature. This is a self-help book. It is downright bad, adolescent writing. It's relentlessly po-faced, and there isn't a whiff of creativity from the prose. I grew up on Irish writers. Irish writers say things like โ
"Choosing his boot, the buttoned class, as a convenient example of inanation, he lifted it in the air"
Irish writers say things like โ
"She opened the fridge for the ham, the butter, the can of Smithwick's. Happy as a duck she was"
These are just the first two lines before my eyes when I picked up the first two books by my elbow. Do you see the difference? Literature should have warmth, humanity, creativity. Writers should have the craic with language. The words should be buttered with character. Ralph Waldo Emerson's output has all the banality of ChatGPT's. Imagine living with this guy. Imagine trying to flirt with him and he just starts lecturing you like a charmless Anglican.
Edgar Allen Poe's pretty good though I'll give the yanks that.