On the Road Avec M. Lévy :American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville

New York Times ^ | January 29,2006 | Garrison Keiller

[Cincinna]

Bernard-Henri Levy is a French writer with a spatter-paint prose style and the grandiosity of a college sophomore; he rambled around this country at the behest of The Atlantic Monthly and now has worked up his notes into a sort of book. It is the classic Freaks, Fatties, Fanatics & Faux Culture Excursion beloved of European journalists for the past 50 years. In more than 300 pages, nobody tells a joke. Nobody does much work. Nobody sits and eats and enjoys their food. You've lived all your life in America, never attended a megachurch or a brothel, don't own guns, are non-Amish, and it dawns on you that this is a book about the French. There's no reason for it to exist in English, except as evidence that travel need not be broadening and one should be wary of books with Tocqueville in the title

[Cincinna]

A pompous self-proclaimed philosopher in a puffy shirt travels across America and describes America to the French. For the French, the US is still Alabama ca.1954. This is a hoot. Read 1st chapter for free!

[Lochlainnach]

Ah, another Minnie-soo-tan speaking the truth about fake intellectuals on a rampage of indulgence.

[Cincinna]

BHL is an "intellectuel". He writes books. He writes poetry. He wears a puffy shirt. Ooh la la!

Shall we look for him on the talk show circuit?

[j. earl carter]

I didn't think it was possible for me to agree with anything written by Garrison Keillor.

[Lochlainnach]

Well, I was being a bit sarcastic. Doesnt' work as well without my baritone.

[visualops]

Will have to give Keiller credit this time, his review is very funny and the book sounds like so much bloviating idiocy.
"And what's with the flurries of rhetorical questions? Is this how the French talk or is it something they save for books about America? "What is a Republican? What distinguishes a Republican in the America of today from a Democrat?" Lévy writes, like a student padding out a term paper. "What does this experience tell us?" he writes about the Mall of America. "What do we learn about American civilization from this mausoleum of merchandise, this funeral accumulation of false goods and nondesires in this end-of-the-world setting? What is the effect on the Americans of today of this confined space, this aquarium, where only a semblance of life seems to subsist?" And what is one to make of the series of questions - 20 in a row - about Hillary Clinton, in which Lévy implies she is seeking the White House to erase the shame of the Lewinsky affair? Was Lévy aware of the game 20 Questions, commonly played on long car trips in America? Are we to read this passage as a metaphor of American restlessness? Does he understand how irritating this is? Does he? Do you? May I stop now?"

[MNJohnnie]

Considering the critic is Garrison Keiller who himself suffers from the "grandiosity of a college sophomore" as well as the petulant temper of a two year old with sever diaper rash all tied up in the only American ego larger then a Frenchman's', I would take anything he says about anyone else with a HUGE grain of salt.

[Stirner]

BHL is a French intellectual, but he is a pro-American European intellectual, which is pretty rare these days. Can't say that Keillor is a pro-American intellectual, so between the two I pick Bernard Henri Levy. He's of the left, but no proponent of revolution because he believes that Cambodia finally proved that leftist revolutions lead only to disaster. About all previous attempts (in France and Russia, for example) leftists could say that the Revolution failed because it was subverted or didn't go far enough, but the Cambodians went all the way. He's following in de Toqueville's steps not to damn us, but to explain to Europeans what is good about America

[norwaypinesavage]

"A pompous self-proclaimed philosopher in a puffy shirt travels across America and describes America to the French"

And a pompous self-proclaimed philosopher in a puffy shirt reads the book and describes it to the French.

[Sam the Sham]

I absolutely loved that part. I was going to post it but I see you got to it first.

[IronJack]

The elitist, Manhattan-bound New York Times runs a review by an effeminate, droll neo-socialist Minnesotan about a book written by a know-nothing Frenchman.

Only in the liberal mind would anything in that sentence be construed to be representative of America.

[aculeus]

Garrison Keillor manages to write something decent.

Amazing!

[aculeus]

BHL is a French intellectual, but he is a pro-American European intellectual, which is pretty rare these days.

Yes he is. He was one of the leaders of the French downgrade of Marxism, the one French intellectual movement that American universities manage to ignore.

[Bernard Marx]

Considering the critic is Garrison Keiller who himself suffers from the "grandiosity of a college sophomore"

Ah yes, but the Frenchie is on what Keillor considers his own exclusive turf: insights into 'Americana,' especially the folkways of transplanted Scandinavians. Fangs are bared, the nostrils twitch, and an elemental blood lust rises in the loins and belly. Keillor is on the hunt!

[liberallarry]

BHL is a French intellectual, but he is a pro-American European intellectual, which is pretty rare these days.

The L.A. Times (I believe) ran a review of the same book in which they emphasized this and pointed out that while Levy didn't like Bush he did like many of the neocons.

He's following in de Toqueville's steps not to damn us, but to explain to Europeans what is good about America

That's right...but I'm still not crazy about the man or his observations. I haven't read the book but I did read most of his articles in the Atlantic. He's pompous and not particularly trenchant in his observations.

[VOA]

The book will be discussed today (Sunday) on BookTV (C-Span2), airing
at 4PM and 10PM, EASTERN Time:
http://www.booktv.org/General/index.asp?segID=6681&schedID=398

[visualops]

It's rather Seinfeldesque lol
"And what's the deal with those rhetorical questions?"

[summer]

This is the funniest book review I have ever read in my life. An excerpt:

...And good Lord, the childlike love of paradox - America is magnificent but mad, greedy and modest, drunk with materialism and religiosity, puritan and outrageous, facing toward the future and yet obsessed with its memories. Americans' party loyalty is "very strong and very pliable, extremely tenacious and in the end somewhat empty." Existential and yet devoid of all content and direction. The partner-swapping club is both "libertine" and "conventional," "depraved" and "proper." And so the reader is fascinated and exhausted by Lévy's tedious and original thinking: "A strong bond holds America together, but a minimal one. An attachment of great force, but not fiercely resolute. A place of high - extremely high - symbolic tension, but a neutral one, a nearly empty one." And what's with the flurries of rhetorical questions? Is this how the French talk or is it something they save for books about America? "What is a Republican? What distinguishes a Republican in the America of today from a Democrat?" Lévy writes, like a student padding out a term paper. "What does this experience tell us?" he writes about the Mall of America. "What do we learn about American civilization from this mausoleum of merchandise, this funeral accumulation of false goods and nondesires in this end-of-the-world setting? What is the effect on the Americans of today of this confined space, this aquarium, where only a semblance of life seems to subsist?" And what is one to make of the series of questions - 20 in a row - about Hillary Clinton, in which Lévy implies she is seeking the White House to erase the shame of the Lewinsky affair? Was Lévy aware of the game 20 Questions, commonly played on long car trips in America? Are we to read this passage as a metaphor of American restlessness? Does he understand how irritating this is? Does he? Do you? May I stop now?

...Thanks, pal. I don't imagine France collapsing anytime soon either. Thanks for coming. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. For your next book, tell us about those riots in France, the cars burning in the suburbs of Paris. What was that all about? Were fat people involved?

[summer]

I meant to ping you on my post #18.

[summer]

LOL....I just now read your post #6 - you posted the same excerpt I did! (Well, I included a bit more!) :)