Fading Relevance

It was nostalgic to read this essay about writers I loved growing up that no one talks about these days. It seems as if a quiet erasure is overtaking American culture: the works and artists of the mid-20th century, once considered foundational, are rapidly fading from public memory. Renowned authors like John Cheever, John Updike, Saul Bellow, and Ralph Ellison, whose books were once literary staples, are now strangers to younger generations. Their novels, short stories, and even Pulitzer Prize–winning operas and Broadway works from the era struggle to find audiences, and institutions that once celebrated such cultural milestone now rarely feature or even acknowledge them. Back in the day when I could not have enough of John Updike, I would find it impossible to conceive of a time when he turned completely irrelevant. 

This disappearance extends beyond literature. Film and music from the 1940s and 1950s, including what many consider masterpieces, are increasingly absent from streaming libraries and concert halls. Netflix algorithms offer modern documentaries in place of “Citizen Kane” or “Casablanca,” and jazz radio stations rarely play early Duke Ellington or Charlie Parker. The effect is that even as America’s cultural influence was at its peak, the nation’s most creative works are vanishing from the daily cultural conversation. To have not watched movies like Citizen Kane, Casablanca and others that each shaped and defined genres is a big miss. 

The root of this erosion, the author argues, is not only generational forgetfulness but the nature of digital culture itself. The internet and its platforms, always steeped in the “now,” create an illusion of immediacy that erases the weight of history. Unlike libraries or museums, streaming services and social feeds privilege content that is current, clickable, and algorithmically favored, sidelining anything that doesn’t fit the digital present. Repetition and meme culture triumph, while rich traditions and earlier masterpieces risk being crowded out.

Yet not all is lost. There are signs of revival in smaller, passionate communities, like young jazz musicians rediscovering pre-war swing, or film buffs obsessing over classic cinema, and the very architecture of libraries and archives still embodies the responsibility we have to remember and cherish the past. The challenge is to resist the web’s tendency toward amnesia and recognize our responsibility: to preserve, pass on, and continue creating cultural legacies that will outlast fleeting trends and digital churn.