The three cryptic letters stand for one of France’s three leading intellectuals: Bernard-Henri Levy. Levy’s new book is American Vertigo. He spent ten months following in the footsteps of an earlier intellectual aristocrat, Tocqueville.
In an previous blog I chastised the NYTimes Book Review for their insulting cover review of the book. I may have been a tad unfair. BHL’s book is truly an intellectual enterprise. It is not reasonable to expect the NYTimes to cope with anything intellectual. They only have two intellectuals among their hundreds of staffers: Ed Rothstein and David Brooks, who probably don’t hang around the office.
I needed several...
My blog readers are intellectuals so I can recommend this book unconditionally.
I needed several days after finishing the book to digest the thoughts
that BHL provoked. He loved Chicago for its lakefront orientation,
great architecture and deep Midwestern enthusiasm about the future. He
loved Seattle even more for its genuine concern about enhancing urban
life and its vitality. BHL waxed sentimental about Savannah for its
beauty and ability to preserve its memory and traditions.
San Francisco came in for entirely warranted criticism for having
descended from the heights of creativity and global influence in the
hippy days to its current warmed over sentimental case of Alzheimers.
BHL and I disagree about Los Angeles and Las Vegas. He doesn’t
understand either city. LA doesn’t meet any models of European cities,
BHL couldn’t find a high spot with a vantage of the whole city. He
clearly didn’t walk out on the upper airspace landings of the Getty
Museum. Los Angeles is the future as well as the present. A
productive, multi-polar, highly diverse, energetic and globally
important city.
Las Vegas is the first city of pure industrial commerce. I wrote about
it several years ago. Since the concept of industrial commerce as a
distinct character of modern life is not known to BHL, his inability to
appreciate Las Vegas is understandable.
The book is a challenge to Lefties and other Democrats. BHL interviewed all the major Lefty thinkers and most of the Democratic Party leaders (he was here during the 2004 presidential campaign and attended both conventions). He did the same with the many non-Leftie thinkers. As many people have said before him: the Left is dead, moribund, caput… all the intellectual innovation and vitality is among the non-Lefties.
BHL adds insult to injury by having gone to some mega churches and some revival meetings; a major growth segment of American cultural life. He points out that the Coastal Blue Bloods can’t know the temper and life of their country without having spent time in some of these churches, which none deign to do.
The great debates of America, that Levy found, concern the role of
America as the world leader, the meaning and significance of democracy
and the way our society can cope with religious terrorism.
Levy loves America, deeply, and appreciates our historic importance and
our over-the-top enthusiasm for life and diversity. America is the
great inclusive society on the planet. Everyone here is an American
and the idea of American is so vast and changing overtime that everyone
can be their own version of an American. Nothing defines America or
what it means to be an American.
The title of the book is a reflection of the myriad contradictions in
our society. Myriad and usually paradoxical. We deplore memory, but we
create museums out of anything and everything. We aren’t fat but we are
currently obsessed with obesity. We hate politicians but love political
debate and yet political debate isn’t important, only the person and
the local issues. America is willing to offer its blood to the world
but has no stomach for empire or imperialism because it hasn‘t
forgotten its colonial roots. Everything about America, including its
nuclear submarines are open for inspection, yet there is no policy to
justify the openness with both allies and enemies. America has the
extremes of wealth and poverty and doesn’t care to hide either.
Religion and shopping go hand in hand.
I recommend Levy’s book. It is challenging, fun and will bring you to tears in a few places.