CONTEMPORARY AMERICA

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27664, 21 May 1955, Page 3

CONTEMPORARY AMERICA

God’s Country and Mine. By Jacques Barzun. Gollancz. 344 pp.

Professor Barzun both loves and chastises his adopted country in this stimulating and witty book about contemporary America. This mixture of loyalty, critical sense, and wit is itself typical of a great nation that harbours so many European-born intellectuals and is yet so different from Europe. TTiis is a book about the United States and about the civilisation developed on the sound foundation of British colonising. Some of the achievements, and some of the aspects of American life that Professor Barzun criticises with splendid vigour, b e found also in New Zealand, with its similar beginnings, so that, conceivably, Professor Barzun could be rea d profitably also as a commentary on life here, too.

But why spoil his freshness by looking for morals in Professor Barzun’s book, when it can be read so happily; purely for the enjoyment his sharp writing gives? Thi§ is an inteHectual’s view of the richest and most varied landscape in the world today. Even where the folly of his fellow mortals most infuriates him, Professor Barzun retains his sense of humour. And his conviction that, after all, his country is the best in the world for him. Such a book is one large temptation to quote. There is, for instance, a superb dialogue between an American and an Englishman on whether there is really such a game as cricket. It is wholly delightnil, like the American s theory of the beginning of a legend: ‘lt’s my belief that ax some time m the past an Englishman may have had the idea of a game to be played with bats and balls. He started to explain it—as many Englishmen have done to their American friends —but he couldn’t go on. It was .too complicated. What saved him and his idead was that he was talking to Englishmeh. They hate theory anyway, so they went ahead and got bats and balls—of sorts—and to oblige their friend they stood around with them, running here and there very quietly from time to time, making believe they were playing the game. That’s how the tradition started. . . . ‘Playing the game’ means they wouldn’t do a thing to dispel the general impression that there is such a thing—it’s an exact parallel to what they call the British Constitution. . . . One of their terms gives the show away; every so often they have a test match—it’s to find out whether the game is possible or not.” Professor Barzun, however, should not be read in snippets.’ What he thinks, for instance, of Kinsey, European .intellectuals, modern education, advertising, the horrors of New York, the inefficiencies of the American postal service, and the impersonality of modern medicine are all of one piece, a singularly entertaining book.