Mark Twain's hyperbolic South.

When I think of American Realism, and the way the movement tried to counteract Romanticism, I can't help but think of the statement made by one Mr. Oscar Wilde: "Life imitates art far more than art imitates life." It seems to me that realism's answer to this maxim was to create an art that no life would ever want to imitate ever - no matter what the circumstances.