The Death of Tragedy...

A German friend says that us Americans are no good when it comes to experiencing tragedy. Disaster and catastrophe, sure, anything big and final that has a whiff of Armageddon suits us fine, but not the quiet, lingering, soul-wrenching sense of ruin that tragedy demands.

You might argue that the New World was colonized in an attempt to leave behind that Old World sense of tragedy. So strong is that impulse in us still, that our culture has embraced the single least flattering and least serious of all the senses in its place: the sense of kooky.

(Title card from Werner Herzog's "Heart of Glass")