I was not much surprised to read Chris Hitchens over at Slate, defending his friend Bernard Henri Levy from Garrison Keillor's scurillous review of American Vertigo. While Hitch wins points for style as ever --"turkey-wattled congressmen" and "the Homer of Middle America", he shoots, he scores!--I have to say that he almost entirely missed the point of Keillor's review. While others found the review more humorous than I did, its laugh track perfectly paralleled Keillor's straight quotation of excrutiatingly cliched interpretations of Americana. So within the realm of dueling reviews, I have to say that Keillor provides a lot more evidence for his more tenable argument that Levy basically doesn't have a clue, and it's emphatically not because he somehow overlooked Lake Woebegon in his travels, as Hitch would have you believe. It is, in a sense, merely tit-for-tat-for-tit. The Frenchman reduces his America to a saccharine shot of lukewarm cliches, the American takes a sip and spits it out, and the boozy Brit drops his coat on the floor and starts in on the "vulgar, nativist American" nonsense. Vulgar, of course, means common--and Keillor's populist shtick (Hitch perhaps started in on the Scotch too early in the review to recognize that it was, in fact, shtick) is precisely the antidote to Anglo-Franco-American miscommunication that is needed, but it is a shtick that almost always is too subtle for British ears, which are most finely tuned to the extremes of the King's English or the Cockney wallows. I'm usually not that interested in these reviews of reviews, unless the principals take their gloves off--in part, because there is a reason Keillor was asked to review the book in the first place, not the bad-breathed Hitchens. And I'm loathe to review a review of a review, but what the hey. I fear Keillor has, in recent years, lost energy for the public parley, the way he used to do. Still, it would be fun to read him responding to Hitch, since Keillor is more than the expat's equal, and has the advantage of a native's sober understanding of the quick jab and the non-nonsense uppercut, so easy to land when a man like Hitch is running around the ring loudly protesting what he in the first place misread.
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It's great to have writers, especially well known and quite talented writers, take on each other. I wish it happened more often, too be honest.
It's also always great to review a review, especially when it's so eloquent-yet-zany. Here's yet another for you:
http://www.flakmag.com/film/pinkpanther.html
After my colleague Stephen and I exchanged some emails, I've come to the conclusion that Garrison and I are the only ones who have -- and probably ever will -- read America Vertigo. And after doing so, it's really hard to fault Garrison.
Here's what I sent to Stephen:
"BHL is the worst sort of theoretician. He quickly skated through the enormity of America's geography and social mileu, and returned two or three paragraphs per person or place to The Atlantic Monthly. He then composed this book of short summations that really doesn't do more than over-comment on the well-know elements of our good old U.S. of A.
American Vertigo isn't an academic review, there's no data. It's not journalism, there's nothing new in its reporting. It's not a case study because he makes no case. It's not even a reasoned argument one way or the other, since BHL chose the largest question he could think of -- What is American Identity? -- and never answered it.
American Vertigo is not any of these things, it's the general musings of a bored old man, really, and that's why the final section of the book is appropriately called "Reflections" and not "Conclusions". You're right with the cliches, like a French version of Andy Rooney.
For example, he gives on page to one of the founders of MoveOn.org and then remarks on "The New Left." Or to give another, after all is said and done, BHL deduces that Americans monumentally worship the past. Who wouldn't buy that?
We get nothing from this sort of over-polished-yet-empty perspective -- althought BHL recommends that we not dispair because there may be hope for America, just yet! -- and that's really what GK's contention is.
Also, BHL's faux intellectuallism is deplorable. Nowhere is his lameness more obvious than when he's tossing around -- as GK mentions, "like a college sophomore" -- the names and terms of 19th and very early 20th century European philosophy. Americans have obesity in their everyday lives. Okay, that's an interesting one-pager in the Atlantic Monthly -- but we certainly don't need a link to Kojeve to understand the obesity of an SUV.
And to praise Francis Fukayama as having it right when it comes to terrorism and foreign policy? Good lord!"
So let us hope that, as you suggest with GK responding to CH, this battle continues.
Well said, well said! Classism is getting way too many passes under the Bush Imperium, and both Hitchens and Levy embody the semiconscious disdain for the common that Keillor skewers well. One sniffs and the other goes slumming. Keillor is our almost-Twain (I think he'd be there if he himself were a little more brokenhearted, though one hates to wish it on him), and though it may be cool to look down one's nose at him, it isn't smart.
Again, thanks!
Very smart take, Hans. "Bad-breathed Hitchens" indeed. Your media criticism is always worth the read.
How about encouraging your fellow bloggers to provide something more nutritious than: 1) vodka fumes (Zellar's depression needs treatment and the crypto-catharsis doesn't seem to be doing the trick) and 2) the political chiclet of the week replete with hyperlink to something I've already read. Craig Cox seems to be launching something relevant at TC Daily Planet--you could command similar ground for matters literary.