Let Us Now Praise America

In this meticulous „expose“, which manages to be humorous while yet compelling, the highly-praised novellist Alan Goldfein tackles The European Reality and The American Delusion— about itself and about Europe. Drawing on a vast knowledge and familiarity with the continent— he lives there half each year— Goldfein focuses his clear writer’s eye on bringing to light the ways in which America does suffer in a faceoff with „the old world“; and these are often hidden ways: On the poverty of wealthy America and the surprising wealth of „poor ‘old’ Europe“. On how „wealthy“ America’s handles don’t work— much less its pumps— in comparison with Old Europe’s smoothly functioning (electronic, automated) handles. Why, for example: You should get sick in Europe, not in the U.S. The German toilets work better than the American. And the radiators; and the parking meters; and the trains; and the roads are far more durable; and the gasoline is better. And, etcetera. It’s better to be an employee in Europe: For wages, free-time, companionship; and respect. The French student (on average) knows Melville and James and Bellow (to some extent), and the American student would not know The Dreyfuss Affair from The Dreyfuss Fund with its roaring lion. America’s rich are far richer than Europe’s rich, and America’s poor far poorer. Life revolves about Community in Europe, and life gravitates to the Individual in America. In Europe’s Macadam, America’s Tar Alan Goldfein has deftly taken the unique approach of exploring Europe in order to better understand America. While many writers have identified the sources of the crisis in American values— our “shambles of infrastructure” (both physical and spiritual) is certainly no secret— words just describing America, and America alone, become merely negative shadow words heard and heard again, tired descriptives, with no thorough comparisons to a comparable world. But by aiming at the problems we face from the vantage point of our cultural brethren across the Atlantic, Alan Goldfein is able to cast a broader light on what must be done to fire up our own national renewal.