Lerner's America
Fitch, Robert E.
Lerner's America America as a Civilization, by Max Lerner. Simon fe Schuster. 1036 pp. |10. Reviewed by Robert E. Fitch A ny one who takes time, as I have, to read through the one thousand pages...
...During that time he was consciously working it out by college teaching and journalism, by consulting with a great number of specialists in every field, and by writing and then editing the manuscript...
...You might want to look at the revolution in property, or you might find more significance in food and cooking...
...If this is what we have, finally, for the quality and for the aspiration of our contemporary civilization, then may heaven help us, since it is unlikely that we can help ourselves...
...I should like to believe that this is so and that this is sufficient...
...The remarkable thing is that, in dealing with this enormous amount of material, Lerner manages to maintain his own perspective as an author without sinking into tired pedantry, and succeeds in keeping his style fresh, fluid, and luminous at all times...
...Reviewed by Robert E. Fitch A ny one who takes time, as I have, to read through the one thousand pages of Max Lerner's America as a Civilization will find the book an extraordinary achievement in comprehensive scholarship and good writing...
...We may believe Max Lerner when he reports that this book was more than a decade in the writing...
...He will somehow break free, even if the new independence he must win is an independence from vested power groups within and the threat of world anarchy without, even if the new federalism he must help construct is that of an expanse of diverse social systems held within the frame of an open world society...
...There is talk of the decline of the small town, of the higher and lower learning, and of jazz as an American idiom...
...While I see no reason to question the great value of what Lerner has done, or the extraordinary competence he has brought to the doing of it, a question may arise concerning the manner of his approach...
...This is to be linked with his vivid portrayal of the 15 character-types in our culture: the fixer, the inside dopester, the neutral man, the conformist, the routineer, the status seeker, the vendible personality, the authoritarian personality, the publicity seeker, the informer-confessor, the voyeur, the fearer-pursuer (for our Age of Anxiety), the adjusting personality, the unadjusted man, and the operational American...
...A careful look at the 37 two-column pages of index and at the 44 two-column pages of notes for further reading will indicate how many matters are explicit in the text, and how much more there was of research and of sifting of the data that is not allowed to burden the reader...
...But if we are going to be so wonderfully wide open, just to what are we laying ourselves open...
...Lerner, however, seems to put faith in what he calls our American dynamism: "The American will not tolerate the fate of being boxed in, like a trapped rat...
...While there are a few passages that appear simply to review what is familiar, there are many more that yield fresh insight and even some that may trouble the mind with perplexing questions...
...The specific topics dealt with are incredible in their variety, and every one will have his own preference as to where he wants to pause in order to savor the quality of the discussion...
...But one wonders whether or not there may be hierarchies of value in a culture, such that some values draw others around them in a pattern of subordination, with a consequent sharper definition of certain salient traits...
...This undertaking goes forward in twelve successive units that deal with our heritage and character, the people and the land, the roles of science, business, government, caste and class, the life cycle of the individual, social traits, belief and opinion, the arts and popular culture, and our functions as a world power...
...Also, in accord with current practice, his treatment is impartial in its equal concern for all the diverse aspects of our culture...
...Yet every item of what I have just listed in a haphazard manner falls into place in a coherent pattern of exposition...
...There are also brief sketches of contrasts in folkways: between the Puritan and the Magnifico among the business Titans, between British and American expectations in marriage, between the children of the middle class and the children of the working class, between our history-book heroes and our vernacular heroes...
...At the moment I find it a bit uncomfortable to look into that question...
...There is, for instance, no real effort to compare American civilization with other civilizations—except at the end of the book where he discusses the analogy with ancient Rome and the contrast with Soviet Russia...
...As for myself I am haunted by Lerner's depiction of the predominantly hedonic tone of our society, with its pursuit of happiness focused on success, prestige, money, power, and security, and with its replacement of the history-book heroes by the vernacular heroes...
...The purpose of this book is to grasp "the pattern and inner meaning of contemporary American civilization and its relation to the world of today...
...There is the struggle for civil liberties, and, in quite another section, the ordeal of the American woman...
Vol. 22 • February 1958 • No. 2
