Anglo Attitudes
How British visitors apprehend America through a glass, darkly
CARLIN ROMANO
"Eagleton occasionally balances the on- slaught with shout-outs to the slivers of America he likes—e.g., Emily Dickinson and “magnificent bacon.” But with so many flaws and delusions, does it matter that we’re also “straight, honest and plain-speaking,” full of “emotional frankness and directness,” preternaturally “enthusiastic,” and “suspicious of the aloof, clinical and impersonal”? That we rank “among the most inventive, imaginative people ever to have walked the earth”? That the United States “is a land where for the most part things work”?
Not much. Especially if such putatively positive traits are, ultimately, indications of rampant egotism and lack of dignity."
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