______ to be an American.

It's seems appropriate to me to respond to these readings together this week. Fallows' article serves as an in-depth analytical look not so much at the "problem" with America, but the problem with how we perceive the problem. Fallows' article helped illuminate our nation's long obsession with the "jeremiad," how, at times, we've been a country whose leaders hold people rapt with with an overwrought list of things that are wrong, and uses the dramatization to evoke a sense of camaraderie. The trendy question seems to be (and we're in this trend now), "is America finally going to hell?" Fallows asks:

Are the fears of this moment our era’s version of the “missile gap”? Are they anything more than a combination of the two staple ingredients of doom-and-darkness statements through the whole course of our history?

What is obvious from outside the country is how exceptional it is in its powers of renewal: America is always in decline, and is always about to bounce back.

I saw these two statements as encapsulations of what Fallows is pointing out here: we have a long obsession with a fear of doom-and-darkness, our fear of decline can act as a motivator to bounce back.  Of course, Fallows points out that we often don't seize the opportunities to "bounce back" when we should, and he also points out that our "decline" doesn't need to be fearsome.

If Fallows' article is a long "telling" of how America perceives itself, then Whitehead and Miller  "show" some of those perceptions in action. The two pieces complement each other: Whitehead's snarky cynicism, very a la Hunter S.  Thompson, critiquing gambling suburban society, and Miller's sincere and emotional diary entries depicting his own personal trauma of 9/11.

Whitehead hits on the American obsession of trying to improve itself:

There is the multiplicity of diversion, sure, but more important is the idea that a sector of human endeavor was diligently trying to improve itself, and succeeding spectacularly. Consumer theorists, commercial architects, scientists of demography were working hard to make the Plex better, more efficient, more perfect, analyzing the traffic patterns and microscopic eye movements of shoppers, the implications of rest room and water fountain placement, and disseminating their innovations throughout the world for the universal good. Even if we fail ourselves in a thousand ways every day, we can depend on this one grace in our lives. We are in good hands.

But we can sense a disapproval in his voice. Perhaps its in the deadpan voice he starts out with. By calling himself dead inside, I began to read all of his descriptions as critiques, as though he was accusing all of American society to be dead inside. Shortly after the above statement, he writes this:

I found my degradation. You can raze the old buildings and erect magnificent corporate towers, hose down Port Authority, but you can't change people. I was among gamblers.

He then dissolves into the snarky stereotyping, delineating the "types" he's surrounded by, breaking each down into their components--habits, wants, dreams. He's got them nailed, and it gives the piece a sort of "I've seen it all" feeling, that there's nothing left to be surprised by and humans just keep falling into this limited subset of personalities.

Miller, on the other hand, illustrates how "through American history worry has always preceded reform." Of course, there is no obvious reform in the piece--he's merely sharing what he wrote in his diary ten years earlier, but we don't get a critique. Here, as a reader, I was moved to empathize, to partake in the sorrow that brings people together. It's subtle, and in no way saccharine, but I do see Miller's piece--contrary to Whitehead's--as a quiet, hopeful plea.

Both pieces are very personal, and I think each uses his relationship to evoke an overall feeling of pro-Americanness or anti-Americanness. In Whitehead's case, his recent divorce, his feelings of being half dead inside seem to reflect the way he views gambling society in particular, and perhaps American society at large. Miller's piece is about trauma, but it's really a love story. We start with the ring, and we get to witness this couple going through the trauma of 9/11 together. Throughout reading this, I remember consciously thinking "at least they have each other." And I think it's the love-story aspect in each piece that keeps them from being either a snarky critique or a sentimental remembrance. It's the heartbreak story and the burgeoning love story that make each universal, that allows each to transcend being just a jab at Americans, or a plea for strength and hope in the time of trauma.

All this talk about America and literature is rather timely. With the Swedish poet winning the Nobel, the whole American authors are 'insular and ignorant' debate is rekindled. Thursday on NPR there was an interview with Alexander Nazaryan, who wrote an article for Salon discussing the comment the Nobel judge made back in 2008 explaining why an American author hasn't won the Nobel in nearly a decade. In the original article, which Nazaryan references, author Aislinn Simpson writes: "Horace Engdahl said that writers from the country that produced Philip Roth, John Updike, Ernest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald were "too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture," dragging down the quality of their work." This seems, to me, so similar to what Fallows is writing--that Americans are just too concerned about our own narrative to really see the bigger picture.

Nazaryan, albeit admitting that the 2008 remarks sparked a lot of unfair vitriol, finds valid criticism in Engdahl's remark:

America needs an Obama des letters, a writer for the 21st century, not the 20th -- or even the 19th. One who is not stuck in the Cold War or the gun-slinging West or the bygone Jewish precincts of Newark -- or mired in the claustrophobia of familial dramas. What relevance does our solipsism have to a reader in Bombay? For that matter, what relevance does it have in Brooklyn?

It almost feels as though Nazaryan is suggesting that American literature can't pull itself from the jeremiad tradition. We're stuck in this rut of self-observation, and even, possible, self-lament. He even criticizes Whitehead here:

The rising generation of writers behind Oates, Roth and DeLillo are dominated by Great Male Narcissists -- even the writers who aren't male (or white). ...Colson Whitehead started promisingly with "The Intuitionist" and "John Henry Days" but his last novel, "Sag Harbor," was little more than the bourgeoisie life made gently problematic by the issue of race.

His final word is that American literature has come to fear the idea of the universal. I find it interesting that I just used that word, not thinking of the end of Nazaryan's article at all, to describe how Whitehead and Miller transcend snark and sentiment, respectively. Neither piece is Nobel worthy. They're successful in their own rights, but do they transcend the American experience? Or are they just products of? I did enjoy reading both--but is that because I, too, want to dig into the people around me? Is it because I become jaded with Americans, with the the Big Mitches and the Methy Mikes? Did I emote while reading Miller's piece because I'm already so  aware of the 9/11 narrative, and I knew I was supposed to feel moved while reading it? (Actually, I don't think so because generally I'm critical of 9/11 narratives, but this one didn't bother me so much.) I'm not sure how much it's worth agonizing over, but should we be concerned with how universal our literature is? Or should we just keep "writing what we know," and adding to the jeremiad that is so ingrained in us--at least those of us who've grown up in the good old US of A?