American Vertigo: On the Road from Newport to Guantanamo [Hardcover]

'God, he's naughty.' Deborah Orr --Independent

'Brilliantly written' --Wall Street Journal

Insightful commentary

'God, he's naughty.'

'Compelling.'

'God he is naughty.'

An entertaining year-long diary through America by one of Europe's most famous authors to discover why Americans are so loud.

Early in the nineteenth century, Alexis de Tocqueville--a
distant relative of Chateaubriand--arrived in Newport, Rhode Island, to
begin a voyage that was to become the first in a long line of iconic
journeys through America--On the Road, Easy Rider, Route One/USA, Vanishing
Point, North by Northwest.
Inspired by these precedents Bernard-Henri Lévy, one of France's most
prominent writers, set off on a year-long tour of the US. One of his
aims--to get to the heart of the growing myths about American culture.
Lévy's crisp diary entries elegantly blend journalism, literature, chance
encounters, a cinematic eye and a philosopher's depth, as he interviews
Americans at a time when they seem to be uncertain about their identity.
From Woody Allen to George Soros, from a proud prostitute in Nevada to a
psychotic death-row convict in New Orleans, Lévy visits the frontiers of
modern American. Probing the paradoxical connection between celebrity and
politics, prisons and retirement communities, nature and American history,
he deftly teases apart the supple strands that hold together the most
influential people in the world.
The result is American Vertigo--both an open-minded travelogue and a strong
antidote to the anti-America sentiment that seem to have become commonplace
in Europe.

Bernard-Henry Lévy is France’s superstar philosopher and author of over thirty books. He is married to the French actress Arielle Dombasle.

IT WAS HERE, not too far south of Boston, on the East Coast, which
still bears the mark of Europe so clearly, that Alexis de Tocqueville came
ashore: Newport, Rhode Island. The well-kept Easton's Beach. Yachts.
Palladian mansions and painted wooden houses that remind me of the beach
towns of Normandy. A naval museum. An athenaeum library. Bed-and-breakfasts
with a picture of the owner displayed instead of a sign. Gorgeous trees.
Tennis courts. A Georgian-style synagogue, portrayed as the oldest in the
United States. With its well-polished pale wood, its fluted columns, its
spotless black rattan chairs, its large candelabra, its plaque engraved
with clear-cut letters in memory of Isaac Touro and the six or seven great
spiritual leaders who succeeded him, its American flag standing next to the
Torah scroll under glass, it seems to me, on the contrary, strangely
modern.

And then, those flags: a riot of American flags, at crossroads, on building
fronts, on car hoods, on pay phones, on the furniture displayed in the
windows along Thames Street, on the boats tied to the dock and on the
moorings with no boats, on beach umbrellas, on parasols, on bicycle
saddlebags--everywhere, in every form, flapping in the wind or on stickers,
an epidemic of flags that has spread throughout the city. There are also,
as it happens, a lot of Japanese flags. A Japanese cultural festival is
opening, with exhibitions of prints, sushi samples on the boardwalk, sumo
wrestling in the street, barkers enticing passers-by to come see these
wonders, these monsters: `Come on! Look at them--all white and powdered!
Three hundred pounds! Legs like hams! So fat they can't even walk! They
needed three seats in the airplane! Step right up!' White flags with a red
ball, symbols of the Land of the Rising Sun, hang from the balconies on a
street of jewellers near the harbour where I'm searching for a restaurant,
to have lunch. In the end, though, it's the American flag that dominates.
One is struck by the omnipresence of the Star-Spangled Banner, even on the
T-shirts of the kids who come to watch the sumo wrestlers as the little
crowd cheers them on.

It's the flag of the American cavalry in westerns, the flag of Frank Capra
movies. It's the fetish that is there, in the frame, every time the
American president appears. It's the beloved flag, almost a living being,
the use of which, I understand, is subject not just to rules but to an
extremely precise code of flag behaviour: don't get it dirty, don't copy
it, don't tattoo it onto your body, never let it fall on the ground, never
hang it upside down, don't insult it, don't burn it. On the other hand, if
it gets too old, if it can no longer be used, if it can't be flown, then
you must burn it; yes, instead of throwing it out or bundling it up, better
to burn it than abandon it in the trash. It's the flag that was offended by
Kid Rock at the Super Bowl, and it's the flag of Michael W. Smith in his
song `There She Stands,' written just after September 11, in which `she' is
none other than `it,' the flag, the American symbol that was targeted,
defiled, attacked, scorned by the barbarians, but is always proudly
unfurled.

It's a little strange, this obsession with the flag. It's incomprehensible
for someone who, like me, comes from a country virtually without a
flag--where the flag has, so to speak, disappeared; where you see it flying
only in front of official buildings; and where any nostalgia and concern
for it, any evocation of it, is a sign of an attachment to the past that
has become almost ridiculous.