As Bernard-Hen­ri Levy joins the ranks upon ranks of French writ­ers who have crossed the Atlantic in Toc­queville’s shoes, it’s worth look­ing back at an Amer­i­can mas­ter’s response to one such for­got­ten attempt. While Gar­ri­son Keil­lor’s take is mar­velous­ly cru­el, the mas­ter I refer to is Mark Twain, from his Essays on Bour­get. Twain asks a ques­tion I find myself won­der­ing as I read about M. Levy floun­der­ing about on top­ics like base­ball: what does M. Levy hope to learn, and what does he hope to teach us?

To return to that first ques­tion. M. Bour­get, as teacher, would sim­ply be France teach­ing Amer­i­ca. It seemed to me that the out­look was dark –almost Egypt­ian, in fact. What would the new teacher, rep­re­sent­ing France, teach us? Rail­road­ing? No. France knows noth­ing valu­able about rail­road­ing. Steamship­ping? No. France has no supe­ri­or­i­ties over us in that mat­ter. Steam­boat­ing? No. French steam­boat­ing is still of Ful­ton’s date–1809. Postal ser­vice? No. France is a back num­ber there. Teleg­ra­phy? No, we taught her that our­selves. Jour­nal­ism? No. Mag­a­zin­ing? No, that is our own spe­cial­ty. Gov­ern­ment? No; Lib­er­ty, Equal­i­ty, Fra­ter­ni­ty, Nobil­i­ty, Democ­ra­cy, Adul­tery the sys­tem is too var­ie­gat­ed for our cli­mate. Reli­gion? No, not var­ie­gat­ed enough for our cli­mate. Morals? No, we can­not rob the poor to enrich our­selves. Nov­el-writ­ing? No. M. Bour­get and the oth­ers know only one plan, and when that is expur­gat­ed there is noth­ing left of the book.

I wish I could think what he is going to teach us. Can it be Deport­ment? But he exper­i­ment­ed in that at New­port and failed to give sat­is­fac­tion, except to a few. …

If it isn’t Deport­ment, what is left? It was at this point that I seemed to get on the right track at last. M. Bour­get would teach us to know our­selves; that was it: he would reveal us to our­selves. That would be an edu­ca­tion. He would explain us to our­selves. Then we should under­stand our­selves; and after that be able to go on more intelligently.

It seemed a doubt­ful scheme. He could explain us to himself–that would be easy. That would be the same as the nat­u­ral­ist explain­ing the bug to him­self. But to explain the bug to the bug–that is quite a dif­fer­ent mat­ter. The bug may not know him­self per­fect­ly, but he knows him­self bet­ter than the nat­u­ral­ist can know him, at any rate.

It’s nice when Mark Twain reviews your book 111 years before you write it.

Com­pare the mod­ern review of Levy’s updat­ing of Bourget:

He blows a radi­a­tor writ­ing about base­ball — “this sport that con­tributes to estab­lish­ing peo­ple’s iden­ti­ties and that has tru­ly become part of their civic and patri­ot­ic reli­gion, which is base­ball” — and when, vis­it­ing Coop­er­stown (“this new Nazareth”), he finds out that Com­mis­sion­er Bud Selig once laid a wreath at the tomb of the Unknown Sol­dier at Arling­ton, where Abn­er Dou­ble­day is also buried, Lévy goes out of his mind. An event impor­tant only to Selig and his imme­di­ate fam­i­ly becomes, to Lévy, an offi­cial procla­ma­tion “before the eyes of Amer­i­ca and the world” of Abn­er as “the pope of the nation­al reli­gion … that day not just the town but the entire Unit­ed States joined in a cel­e­bra­tion that had the twofold mer­it of asso­ci­at­ing the nation­al pas­time with the tra­di­tion­al rur­al val­ues that Fen­i­more Coop­er’s town embod­ies and also with the patri­ot­ic grandeur that the name Dou­ble­day bears.” Uh, actu­al­ly not. Nega­to­ry on “pope” and “nation­al” and “entire” and “most” and “embod­ies” and “Dou­ble­day.”

Gar­ri­son Keil­lor is many things, but I’ll take Twain any time. Twain has decid­ed that Bour­get has been made the vic­tim of repeat­ed prac­ti­cal jokes:

But one must be allowed to sus­pect that M. Bour­get was a lit­tle to blame him­self. Even a prac­ti­cal jok­er has some lit­tle judg­ment. He has to exer­cise some degree of sagac­i­ty in select­ing his prey if he would save him­self from get­ting into trou­ble. In my time I have sel­dom seen such dar­ing things mar­ket­ed at any price as these con­science­less folk have worked off at par on this con­fid­ing observ­er. It com­pels the con­vic­tion that there was some­thing about him that bred in those spec­u­la­tors a quite unusu­al sense of safe­ty, and encour­aged them to strain their pow­ers in his behalf. They seem to have sat­is­fied them­selves that all he want­ed was “sig­nif­i­cant” facts, and that he was not accus­tomed to exam­ine the source whence they pro­ceed­ed. It is plain that there was a sort of con­spir­a­cy against him almost from the start–a con­spir­a­cy to freight him up with all the strange extrav­a­gances those peo­ple’s decayed brains could invent.

The lengths to which they went are next to incred­i­ble. They told him things which sure­ly would have excit­ed any one else’s sus­pi­cion, but they did not excite his. Con­sid­er this:

“There is not in all the Unit­ed States an entire­ly nude statue.”

If an angel should come down and say such a thing about heav­en, a rea­son­ably cau­tious observ­er would take that angel’s num­ber and inquire a lit­tle fur­ther before he added it to his catch. What does the present observ­er do? Adds it. Adds it at once. Adds it, and labels it with this inno­cent comment:

“This small fact is strange­ly significant.”

It does seem to me that this kind of observ­ing is defective.

Is now the time to ask why it is that France seems to think that Amer­i­ca is in des­per­ate need of explain­ing, and why it is that the French are con­vinced they are the ones to do it?

“

On the Road Again

” by

Bob Dylan

from the album

Bring­ing It All Back Home


(2003, 2:37).

Then you ask why I don’t live here
Hon­ey, I can’t believe that you’re for real.