I really wanted to like A.A. Gill's
To
America with Love (Simon &
Schuster, 2013, $25.00, 256 pages, originally published in Great
Britain in 2012), but
little things kept intruding on my consciousness to lead me first to
question its accuracy and then to actually distrust not only the
facts but the point of view underlying it. That's a shame, because
there's much to the book that deserves admiration or that succeeds in
simultaneously entertaining and enlightening. Gill, described as a
provocateur, is that indeed. He was born in Edinburgh, but has lived
in London for most of his life. He is a contributing editor at Vanity
Fair. The book seeks to explain
America to the British (and by extension to other Europeans) with
typical arch British humor and a deeply ironic and satirical voice.
His profile in Wikipedia describes him as being dyslexic, hiring
readers to read text to him and copy editors to transcribe his badly
mis-spelled output. This may mean that while his writing is sometimes
inaccurate, so is his listening. If his goal is to provoke, he
succeeds in spades. If he also wishes to shed real light on the
American character and scene, he needs to do some more thinking and
work. Still, this is a sometimes informative and often amusing book
worth reading, particularly if one reads from a perspective of
sufficient knowledge of America to keep it in context and recognize
it for what it actually is.
Gill
is a Scotsman, many of whose relatives have emigrated to America and
been quite successful in business. Meanwhile, those who stayed behind
have kept a scrapbook of cuttings following the adventures of his
American cousins. Or at least that's the conceit he structures much
of To
American with Love around.
He says, “I have often thought that Europe's view of America has
been formed and deformed by the truth that we are the ones who stayed
behind, for all those good, bad, and lazy reasons: for comfort, for
conformity and obligation, but mostly I suspect because of habit and
fear.” He therefore, semi-accurately describes much of the American
experience as one of striving, adventure, freedom, and violence.
In
seventeen mostly standalone essays, Gill considers elements of
American history, politics, and pop culture, always from the
viewpoint of an alien seeking to describe American culture to others
who observe it from afar and participate in its world-wide output of
music, film, and news through their own national cultural lens. Gill
suggests that his Scottish/American heritage gives him a unique
perspective for interpreting Americans to Europeans for the
betterment of America. Gill is a master of that arch British turn of
phrase and use of language which seeks, and usually finds, the
perfect nasty words and quick judgments that can cement an
impression. He's really good at it, and therein lies the pleasure and
danger of this volume.
In a
chapter on “Loneliness,” Gill pictures the dead and dying farm
towns of middle America, where main streets have been decimated by
Wal Marts along the Interstate highways and farm auctions are an
every day occurrence, as the essence of middle America rather than
seeing it as a systemic failure of our land to manage runaway
commercialism and restless capitalism. This is all couched in
seductive. beguiling language. But this discussion leads to an
exploration of our love of wilderness and open space that results in
the establishment of national parks and a national literature giving
us Emerson, Thoreau, and Melville as well as Natty Bumpo, Ishmael,
Shane, and Jack Reacher. Perhaps Gill's greatest talent it finding
connections many of us wouldn't see and pointing them out.
His
chapter on “Sex,” the bold title of the it, uses every word many
Americans shy away from, at least publicly, to point out to us our
puritanical nature. He then explores the American sexual experience
through an analysis of the Playboy
centerfold throughout the magazines history, always with an emphasis
on the changing size and shape of air-brushed breasts. His emphasis,
in the end, is upon our confusion, which should be no great insight
to anyone growing up here. Meanwhile, he neglects to acknowledge the
the emerging awareness of differences in sexuality and our growing
accommodations of these differences.
Gill's
chapter called “Evolution” uses the 1925 Scopes trial as the lens
to look at the collision between our rational, enlightenment based
culture and our biblical literalism, which have caused irreconcilable
differences in America since the earliest days of the Pilgrims,
through the first and second Great Revivals during the nineteenth
century and on into the struggle between evolution and creationism,
the creature of biblical literalists. He chooses the personalities
and character of writer H.L. Mencken, lawyer Clarence Darrow, and
politician/orator William Jennings Bryan as the center of this
difficult and divisive struggle.
His
chapter on Film begins with a thoughtful and interesting analysis of
the influence of American film on world culture using D.W. Griffith's
racist silent film The Birth of a Nation
as his prime example for exploring the nature of film and its
evolution in America. The discussion is utterly ruined, however, by
the unpardonable racist slur against Barack Obama at chapter's end,
using language no longer found in this country. Many other chapters
deserve comment, especially “Moonshine” and “Germans,” but
you get the idea.
A.A. Gill
Gill
comments, “The repression that comes from freedom, freedom that
allows titanic success and unimaginable wealth was also the freedpm
to fail without let or hindrance. The freedom to be born into
failure, the freedom to be cheated, conned, and plowed into failure,
to be sucked down and fed with failure, to fail by color and
history.” The book ends by asking the question that few Americans
ask themselves. “Why has socialism not taken hold in America?”
Somehow he seems to neglect to examine the effects of socialism upon
his own country. It seems a strange ending to a book entitled To
America with Love. Nevertheless,
this book provides almost always interesting insight into aspects of
American life and culture that we either take for granted or haven't
considered. As such, its a valuable and thought provoking exploration
written in an engaging, ironic style even while it often sacrifices
accuracy for the pyrotechnic effects of language. I received ToAmerica with Love as
an electronic galley from the publisher through Edelweiss and read it
on my Kindle.
