The Dangers of Brilliance

Tuesday, 26th May 2009

Given the nature of his own work there was something delightfully, shall we say, mischievous about David Brooks' review of Simon Schama's (absurdly titled) The American Future: A History. The into was especially good:

Some people collect stamps, and others butterflies, but I have a thing for Brilliant Books. The Brilliant Book is the sort of book written by a big thinker who comes to capture the American spirit while armed only with his own brilliance.
He usually comes during an election year so he can observe the spectacle of the campaign and peer into the nation’s exposed soul. He visits the stationsof officially prescribed American exotica. He will enjoya moment of soulful rapture at a black church. He will venture out to an evangelical megachurch (and combine condescension with self-congratulationby bravely announcing to the world that these people are more human than you’d think). He will swing by and be brilliant in rambunctious Texas. He’ll be brilliant in the farm belt, brilliant in Las Vegas, reverential in Selma and profound in Malibu.
Along the way, his writing will outstrip his reportage. And as his inability to come up with anything new to say about this country builds, his prose will grow more complex, emotive, gothic, desperate, overheated and nebulous until finally, about two-thirds of the way through, there will be a prose-poem of pure meaninglessness as his brilliance finally breaks loose from the tethers of observation and oozes across the page in a great, gopping goo of pure pretension.

All true and all good reasons why British journalists and travelling film-makers should rarely be encouraged to write books about their times in America. Little that is either good or new or revelatory ever comes of such broad-brush adventures. Granted, Schama's book can't be as bad as Bernard-Henri Levy's fanciful American roadtrip (inexplicably serialised in the Atlantic for, it seemed, years on end) but I can't believe it's anything close to being his best work either...

Filed under: Americana (477 more articles) , Books (177 more articles) , History (515 more articles)

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daniel.waweru

May 26th, 2009 4:50pm Report this comment

I especially liked the bits about St. John Crèvecoeur's intense belief in the new American man. Those bits are at the heart of the book: the point is to show what sort of people America makes. David Brooks wants more reportage. He's missing the point, unlike the Chronicle reviewer (http://is.gd/F6ja)

Anthony

May 26th, 2009 5:22pm Report this comment

Amusing and true, but isn't Brooks himself sometimes guilty of some of that with which he charges Schama and friends? I don't think it demeans Brooks too much to note that a fair bit of his reputation was built upon "explaining" contemporary America by going out, selecting a few colourful and well placed anecdotes and perceiving fairly expansive social trends on the basis of this.

One might also argue that, being American, Brooks has rather less of an excuse than those at whom he is tilting.

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