According to the German literary critic Karl Heinz Bohrer, it was "the American Gods", who, after 1945, "arose from the sea, chewing gum and listening to this wonderful new music." For many West German authors and musicians this encounter with American popular culture through Jazz, Beat, and Pop initiated a radical new beginning directed against European traditions that were increasingly seen as oppressive. This new literature calls for a culture of velocity, of the surface, and the popular. The intensive discussion and reception of American culture, which this volume examines, is more complex and varied than what the literary scholarship has been willing to acknowledge. This volume collects a dozen case studies on the reception of American pop culture from the genre's prehistory in the 1940s and 50s to the present. In addition, the book contains an interview with Thomas Meinecke, one of the leading novelists in the field of so-called "Popliteratur".
