America in a Distorting Mirror

...The image of America which today haunts the American intellectual—the "lonely crowd" or "organization man"—is only hinted at here and there...

...violent America...

...These early prejudices were modified by later acquaintance with Sinclair Lewis, Jack London, the Great Depression and eventually Faulkner and Tennessee Williams...

...Contributors include such distinguished experts as D. W. Brogan and Raymond Aron who, with great wit, reveal as much about Britain and France as they do about America...

...European nations which pride themselves on their old civilizations, Britain, France, Spain and Italy— seem to reveal an attitude which can be described as "sour grapes...

...The nations of Central and South America, in turn, reveal an attitude compounded of envy of American material standards, which they wish to emulate as quickly as possible, and fear of past, present and future American political and economic imperialism...

...All, including Amanda Labarca (Chile), remark that, unlike the Americans, for them time is not money...

...If the portrait of America which emerges from these pages is not entirely to the taste of all Americans, let some at least find consolation in the view of Omer Celal Sarc that American women "live peacefully and cordially with their men," and that though generally well-educated, there are hardly "any femmes savantes," even among American lady professors—who "usually keep their femininity...

...The Yugoslav and Egyptian contributions fall below the general level—both are too obviously government-inspired...

...Moreover, in this particular instance, as Mochtar Lubis points out, while the rich may understand the poor, the poor find it very hard to understand the rich...

...Broadly speaking, the feeling toward America harbored by these authors falls into one of three categories...

...Writing from Spain, Julian Marias notes with approval the absence of envy from American life—envy being the besetting social sin of the Spaniard...

...This is the energetic, enterprising, positive, crude...

...The authors also tend to seize on aspects of the American scene which stand out in vivid contrast to their own societies...

...Its impact is still to come...

...A collective experience of this nature has evidently resulted in Franz M. Joseph's group of 20 essays on the United States "through foreign eyes...

...Reviewed by Isabel de Madariaga British author and critic ON MY FIRST visit to the United States, I had been in New York less than a week when I was asked quite solemnly : "What don't you like about America...

...Finally, the old and new nations of the Middle and Far East see in America a more exciting model than Europe offers, a short cut to a new industrial classless society, marred, it is true, by the color bar and the callousness of a competitive economy, yet nevertheless holding out hope...

...European opinion of the left and of the right, for different reasons, rejects the American model, sees America as a threat to an established way of life, and by easy stages casts America for the role of scapegoat for all their ills...

...More interesting in many ways—because more novel—are the contributions from new countries such as Ghana, or from countries whose acquaintance with America is relatively recent, such as Turkey...

...Indeed, while the countries of the East and the Latin world all express willingness to learn from America in the field of technology, and in some cases also in the field of social relations, they proclaim with one voice that what America can learn from them is how to live, how to add flavor to life, whether by learning to stroll through the streets (Turkey), cultivating serenity (India) or simply learning to lose time (Spain...

...Orner Celai Sarc (Turkey), K. A. B. Jones-Quartey, S. R. Shafaq (Iran), Mochtar Lubis (Indonesia—one of the most engaging essays in the book) and Marias all draw attention to the lesson their countrymen can usefully learn from the straightforward American attitude to work...

...The interest of this volume lies not only in the varied picture of America it provides...

...Riverside Drive and Claremont Avenue, please note...

...There is envy of American material prosperity coupled with resentment at what appears to them to be a progressive Americanization of their own masses...

...With surprising unanimity, almost all the authors have derived their early prejudices in favor of America from the Founding Fathers and Mark Twain fa notable exception is K. A. B. Jones-Quartey of Ghana whose first heroes were Jack Dempsey, Abraham Lincoln and Booker T. Washington...

...It is in some ways curiously out of date...

...By superimposing these 20 reflections of America in as many distorting mirrors, the eager American inquirer will at last have some idea of the image of his country held in the world at large...

...It is to be hoped that those who wish to understand the modern world better will at least dip into this collection, for the problem of understanding between nations is intractable indeed, conditioned as it is by the great barrier of indifference...