American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville

Take a one way ticket with Bernard Henri Levy and his text, "American Vertigo" and make the most astonishing journey you ever thought you would do. This book just makes you plunge into the deepest part of yourself - as an American, as a person, as a citizen, as a human being... Though sometimes I feel reluctant to follow Mr Levy in his "clichés" (what about our image of the infamous baguette and French arrogance???), what a wonderful delight to leap into his steps and discover (or rediscover) the marvellous landscapes we share as a nation and to become aware, just for a while, of our differences - the ones we forget or ignore in our everyday lives... I'm a New Yorker - not black, nor poor... I could be Chinese or Jewish, a politician or a gay, I could live in Savannah or across the Mexican border... I could dream of a better future or I could guard myself from the others, with guns, alcohol, money, priests... Whatever, I'm an American ; I'm part of this endless puzzle, I was developed under this wonderful rainbow where all the colours are obliged to mix...I suddenly realize that I'm proud of me, whoever I am ... This is the fabulous program of Mr Levy's trip (sorry, `book) ; you travel alongside Sharon Stone, Jim Harrison, James Ellroy, Hillary, John, George...you take a walk on the wild side before returning to the light of ideas and debates ... You meet grey people, bizarre characters, charismatic tycoons, even normal employees ... but in the end, when you reach the final stop, after the winding bends and detours, you're in the place where Bernard Henri Levy wanted you to be, provided you've read between the lines, that is! This landing place is called: Freedom and Democracy. Believe me when I tell you the journey is worth every second of the ride. I would do it again just for the feeling of reaching the final stop. Take a ticket for this quick trip, open your mind, but prepare yourself for a shock - the other passengers aren't exactly like you... But this is all a part of the adventure and maybe the most exciting thing in the book ! Differences....Thank you Mr Levy to remind us that our differences and weaknesses are also our forces, that we will always have this foolish willingness to make it better everyday, even if we fail sometimes! This was your final conclusion, wasn't it ? Whatever your detractors may think...

Had seen the author on the Charlie Rose Show on PBS and then read a review of the book by Garrison Keillor January 29, 2006 in the New York Times, and loving Keillor on The Prairie Home Companion and having read his books I was intrigued so I bought AMERICAN VERTIGO Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville. By Bernard-Henri Lévy. Thing is I became even more perplexed. Between wondering why Charlie Rose was even mentioned, much less so much, in the book to wondering if Garrison Keillor had read the same book I was reading. Yes, I like the book. Not because its about anything in America I know, but because of the elements of America I either didn't know about or didn't care that much about. Putting myself in the authors shoes I tried to visualize how he chose the places and people he was writing about. In fact I wish he would have shared more about how he did choose to visit certain places and talk to certain people. Like why Sharon Stone? The fact that he is a self proclaimed atheist Frenchman who is of Jewish background helped me sort things out. Simply because I tend to travel alot and seek out people and places different from myself and my comfort zones. So I at back as if in the car traveling with the author from one state to another. Trying hard to see the faces and sites he was seeing and taking in the smells, heat. cold, terrain he was observing. It helped alot too. The book really makes 'melting pot' real. Unlike France and many other countries that aren't as diverse as the United States of America, the book actually shows a much more 'live and let live' attitude which I found refreshing. The Reflections chapter toward the end really is good. I especially loved how he writes of the obesity situation here in the states and how he hit the nail on the head when he writes about obesity beyond Americas weight situation and how we have an obesity epidemic in most areas of our lives beyond super size meals, to the homes we own, cars we drive, high tech toys we own, clothes we buy, entertainment we partake of. Great food for thought. This chapter alone made the book well worth the price!!

In his review of this book in `NYT Book Review' Garrison Keillor does an old- fashioned hatchet job. He adopts an attitude towards it, and writes one long put- down. Reading the review, and having read many reviews of books in my time, I knew it was unfair without reading one page of the book. Now I have read the book, and I believe the review is unfair, but does hit on a certain truth. In some way Bernard Henri- Levy just does not `get America'. He wasn't born and raised in America, he doesn't really have the feeling or spirit of it. It's not in his writing, not in the tone of what he says. One major example of this for me was in the way he wrote about ` the myth ` of Cooperstown, the way he goes through some strange intellectual exercise to indicate that Abner Doubleday did not invent the game. And he makes this seem as if it is of tremendous importance to most fans. The man does not know what baseball is. His description of Cooperstown, and even of the `Farmer's Museum' there is off. He doesn't have the feel, or the spirit of it, doesn't understand the innocence and dreams connected with it, its special lore, has no sense of the real feel of what a ballfield is, or probably even what a game of `pitch' and `catch' is. But that said Bernard Henri- Levy does provide in his very heavily researched and studied travel through America a certain kind of European -intellectual's insight and perspective. He does this, commissioned by Atlantic Magazine to go in the footsteps DeTocqueville who provided the great ur- commentary on American society, who set the standard for all sociologists debate in regards to it today. The assignment of course is unfair, and BHL is simply not in the same league , and could not expected to be . Nor does he in some sense really try to be, and admits in the outset that he is not making a literal and direct parallel commentary to his great predecessor countryman's excursion. Instead he makes a journalistic journey of his own one rich in observations but also perhaps over-rich in philosophical reflection. In the course of this, he truly does his work, travels it seems coast to coast, visits a number of prisons, speaks with some of America's most foremost intellectuals, William Kristol, Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington, has a five- minute interview with Presidential Candidate Kerry, speaks with politically involved left- wing movie-stars, Sharon Stone and Warren Beatty, visits a whole host of American cities, finding two he loves, Seattle and Savannah , meets with people in bordellos and shopping - malls, in Indian Reservations and model- cities (Sun- City) .And he writes essentially a long series of vignettes of his encounters and experiences, many of which for me were tremendously informative and convincing. Inhabitants of Sun- City will not love him, but I found his picture of a sterile segregated artificial Paradise a stark warning of where not to turn in Old Age. I too was taken by his rave description of

I ordered this book after seeing Levy on the Jon Stewart show.  He was an entertaining guest.  The book is also entertaining (very), but make no mistake: this is a serious, thoughtful, surprising, and deeply engaging meditation on America today.  Levy is both critical of our country (he has every right to be in my view) but also refreshingly optimistic.  America remains, for Levy, a great nation and his reflections on this are as beautiful as anything I've read on the subject.  Levy's book also takes just about every cliche about America you can name, and which are especially prevalent in Europe today (that we are pragmatic, not idealistic, that we are obese, which for Levy is a myth, that we are a nation of rabid religious fundamentalists, that we are an empire hell-bent on dominating the earth, and so forth, and shows why they are invariably simplistic when not completely wrong.  Levy sees danger ahead - what he calls the "democratic messianism" of Bush, the neocons, and the right wing establishment; the national embarrassment that was Katrina; a kind of poverty that was as shocking to Levy as it should be to every American.  And he sees a failure of nerve - and of ideas - on the left.       But on the other hand he also sees America as fundamentally sane - and a country that is always in the process of renewing itself; still based on and guided by an American creed unique in the world. This is a book that both reminds you of what is broken in America, and also reminds you of its greatness.  For me, what Levy says about America's old and continuing "grandeur" was relevatory and very moving.      This book is very beautifully written but it is not for simpletons.  But for anyone interested, really interested, in where America is as a country today, you will not find a more interesting or thought-provoking "take" than AMERICAN VERTIGO.        Finally a word about the garrison Keiller review someone mentioned.  I'm sorry to say it, but that was the most ill-informed, dumbed down, and practically racist review I've seen in a long time in a major paper (what if he had said, "The next time a Pole decides to write a book about America, watch out."  But it's OK to say about a French guy-- who, it turns out -- happens to be Jewish).  Keiller completely misses the point of the book, along with every idea contained in it.  Keiller makes American book reviewers, at least, sound like the complete idiots that Levy is convinced Americans are not. 

It is often refreshing to read the observations of a foreigner on your own country. After traveling for nine months, Bernard-Henri Levy, or B.H.L. has written a provocative, entertaining, insightful book about America in the 21st century. His comments about the number of American flags on buildings and stores are funny and pertinent. The American obssession with their flag surprises many foreigners. Whether BHL writes about the power of religion, the American relationship with nature and the violence of hurricanes, banks looking like churches and churches looking like banks, the false representation of the birthplace of baseball, his observations are infused with cultural insight and his prose sparkles with intelligence and verve. He is most concerned, however, with the conditions of American prisons and the poverty he saw in the suburbs of LA and NY. This book written by a Frenchman who does not have any anti-American feeling and appreciates the diversity and the richness of American culture might contribute to see this country in a new light. Linda