Book Review-American Studies

Book Review: American Studies

By M.Motahhari & R.Sarikhani

 

American studies by Louise Menand

Farrar, Straus, & Giroux

Hardcover (alk. paper)

New York 2002 (p.ix, 306. $ 25.00)

ISBN 0-374-10434-4

American Studies is written by Louis Menand, the author of the so-called “Metaphysical Club”, who is distinguished professor of the English and a writer at the New Yorker. It is a collection of essays each seemingly separate from the other. The essays have been published in different places before and are brought together in this book to make a whole. The topics of this group of essays run from Oliver Wendell Holmes to Larry Flynt and Jerry Falwell. He also says some thing about William James, T.S.Eliot, The New Yorker, Bill Paley of CBS, Pauline Keal, Christopher Lasch, Maya Lin, and “the mind” of Al Gore. The book is a reprint of essays that were written in The New Yorker, The New Yorker Review of Books, and the new republic. As the title of book suggests, it is a suitable book for those who are interested in American Studies, but it shouldn’t be first book they read in this area because in that case they will get confused and can not understand the indication in the text. Therefore it is better to have some prior knowledge of American Studies and then try to read this book because it is not as simple as the title.

The cover photo presents the complexity of the book, by depcting a lady who is reading a book intensively or she is pretending to reading, and a man who is curious to know what she is reading. Actually the photo tells us about that, things have a surface that can be seen and depth that is sometime unknown to us.

In the preface that author gives a description of the view from his office, which he points to the tall buildings being demolished every day so that even taller ones could be constructed and in a matter of days, new ones replace them. By bringing such descriptions he wants to tell us that:” History is the same”. He argues that while we live in a time, we are not aware of the current trends and tendencies, but when time passes, we suddenly understand that new trends have replaced old ones. That is when we try to still hold to old trends or at least fit them in to new conditions.

But as the author claims “the only way to make the past usable, is to “misinterpret it” or in another words, “to lose it”. That is what exist in American culture that praises those who are “ahead of their times” and not those who stick to the past.

The essays are mainly biographical, stretching from 1901 to 2001, and in this way showing some outstanding events of American culture of nearly a century. By referring to those events he wants to show how they were perceived differently in their own time. From present time, he brings the example of TV shows, saying that once they were looked upon with praise but nowadays they are being criticized.

Lack of coherence and continuity between essays reminds us of the main feature of modernity, that is lack of certainty and continuity, so we can say that, the author has astutely enforcing his idea even in the structure of his book, so he has been successful in conveying his message indirectly to the audience.

One of the major shortcomings of the book can be its inability to discuss the issues independently from outside knowledge. In other words, the reader can not get the implication the author wants unless he has a structured knowledge of it before hand.

That is because he is not after a kind of closed look at the events or persons that he gives information about in his boo, instead he analyzes the context of in which the person has lived or the event has taken place.

May be in this way the author wants to challenge the reader to do further researches and to take what he is for granted.

Comparing this book to other books in this field, we can say it is more specific and is not intended to give the reader general knowledge about the subject. Works by other New Yorker, this book is a rather spiritless work. Other books about written in this subject are basically given introductory knowledge.

One thing is for sure, that this book can play a complementary role but the major role should be played by other books.