In Culture
The Catskills are famous in American cultural history for being the site of the so-called Borscht Belt, a Jewish resort area where many young Jewish stand-up comics got their start.
The Catskill mountains and their inhabitants play an important role in the stories My Side of the Mountain and its sequels by Jean Craighead George and in H. P. Lovecraft's "The Lurking Fear" & "Beyond the Wall of Sleep".
The town of Palenville located in the Catskills figures in Washington Irving's story as the home of "Rip Van Winkle".
The Catskills are mentioned in The Band's song "Time to Kill." The Band was also photographed there for their first album, Music from Big Pink The Band in the Catskills.
The Catskills are also mentioned in Beck's song "High Five (Rock the Catskills)" on his 1996 album Odelay.
Mercury Rev's song "Opus 40" on their 1998 album Deserter's Songs contains the line "Catskill mansions buried dreams/ I'm alive she cried but I don't know what it means". The band and their studios are based in the Catskills, and the area is often referred to in interview.
The opening lyrics of The Ladybug Transistor's "Song for the ending day" on their eponoymous 2003 album are 'It could take a year just to climb all the hills in the Catskills'.
The Catskills are mentioned as well in Pela's song "Rooftops (Moth Song Outro)" on their 2007 album Anytown Graffiti.
Much of the frame story of Art Spiegelman's award-winning graphic novel Maus is set in the Catskills. Maus II is subtitled And Here My Troubles Began (From Mauschwitz to the Catskills and Beyond).
A Home Box Office miniseries is planned that will dramatize a New York magazine article on natural gas drillers coming to the region. Richard Russo, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, is writing a script for the project.
The town of Bethel, New York, located in the Catskills was home to the famous Woodstock Music festival in 1969.
The 1973 novel Nickel Mountain: A Pastoral Novel by John Gardner takes place in the Catskill Mountains.
Read more about this topic: Catskill Mountains
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“Let a man attain the highest and broadest culture that any American has possessed, then let him die by sea-storm, railroad collision, or other accident, and all America will acquiesce that the best thing has happened to him; that, after the education has gone far, such is the expensiveness of America, that the best use to put a fine person to is to drown him to save his board.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I am writing to resist the view that Europe and civilization are going to Hell. If I am being “crucified for an idea”Mthat is, the coherent idea around which my muddles accumulated—it is probably the idea that European culture ought to survive, that the best qualities of it ought to survive along with whatever cultures, in whatever universality. Against the propaganda of terror and the propaganda of luxury, have you a nice simple answer?”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)