Why didn't the United States develop its own fairy tales/folk

We have Star Wars and DC / Marvel comics

Fairy tales are an oral tradition. They can't develop once a good chunk of your population is literate.

>>8974280
If you take a close look at American "folk" tales, you quickly become aware that they, like the US itself, are manufactured. Everything about US is "inauthentic' in the sense that it is inorganic. Look at what Gish's piece in NYRB did to Carver's reputation overnight.

Paul Bunyan, in its most "folksy" form, starts with a contest against a chainsaw, and its a fable about resisting technology. So is John Henry, who loses an epic battle with a new-fangled steam hammer.

Disney also recycled the "legend" of Davy Crockett, and Daniel Boone was folked up to attract immigrants to Kentucky.

Protestants who founded the country didn't abide by that crap. Later, immigrants who brought the stories over were too busy working their asses off to retell them. After the industrial revolution children probably learned less from the grandparents and more at a school. I just pulled all of that out of my ass but I think it's a good guess.

Neil Gaiman is eeehhh but you might enjoy American Gods.

Perhaps it's the same old issue of thinking of the US as a monoculture. The bayou quite obviously has its legends, but they're very different from something like the Jersey devil in the northeast.

>>8974280

>why didn't x do y
>immediately follows up with instances of x doing y "oh no but those don't really count" :^)

>>8974280
Uh, the Old West?

The outlaw, the lone gunman, the sheriff in a tiny prospector's town. The bandito, the Indian ambush, the wagon circle. A lone hawk circling in the sky over a hero dying of thirst. The wide open plane and the duel at High Noon.

>>8974280
> never any real definitive literature
Folk and fairy tales didn't have much literature either, until the stories were compiled and sold as books. In fact there was supposedly a lot of variation between versions before they were made definitive by the published books.

>>8974533 points out that America is very diverse. I like to think what we lack in country-wide stories we make up for in local, urban legends, some of which have Old World influence.