favorite musicians are American: Frank Sinatra, Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Leonard Bernstein, Burt Bacharach, James Brown, Chet Baker, Brian Wilson, Johnny Cash, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Lou Reed, Randy Newman, Michael Stipe, Billy Corgan, Kurt Cobain.
My favorite film directors are American: Howard Hawks, Orson Welles, Robert Altman, Blake Edwards, Stanley Kubrick, John Cassavetes, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, David Lynch, Russ Meyer, Sam Raimi, Paul Thomas Anderson, Larry Clark, David Fincher, M. Night Shyamalan.
American culture dominates the planet not for economic reasons, but because of its quality. It’s too easy to ascribe its influence to political machination, to compare Disney to Hitler or Spielberg to Satan. American art is constantly renewing itself, because it is profoundly rooted in real life. American artists are constantly searching for something new, but something new which speaks to us of ourselves. They know how to reconcile imagination and accessibility, originality with the desire to seduce. Molière was in it for the money, Mozart wanted to be famous: there’s nothing shameful about that. American artists churn out fewer theories than their European counterparts, because they haven’t got time, they’re too busy with the practice. They seize the world, grapple with it and, in describing it, they transform it. American authors think of themselves as realists when in fact they’re all Marxists! They’re hypercritical of their own country. No democracy in the world is as contested by its own literature. American independent and underground cinema is the most subversive in the world. When they dream, American artists take the rest of the world with them, because they are more courageous, more hardworking and because they dare to mock their own country. Many people believe that European artists have a superiority complex when it comes to their American counterparts, but they’re mistaken: they have an inferiority complex. Anti-Americanism is in large part jealousy and unrequited love. Deep down, the rest of the world admires American art and resents the United States for not returning the favor. A compelling example? Bernard Pivot’s reaction to James Lipton (presenter of the program The Actor’s Studio) on the last Bouillon de Culture. The host of the finest literary program in the history of French television seemed completely intimidated by Lipton, a pompous, toadying hack who chairs sycophantic discussions with Hollywood actors on some minor-league cable channel. Pivot, who created Apostrophes, a man who has interviewed the finest writers of his generation, couldn’t get over the fact that he was quoted in the States by a sycophantic creep.
What bothers us is not American imperialism, but American chauvinism, its cultural isolation, its complete lack of any curiosity about foreign work (except in New York and San Francisco). France has the same relationship with the United States nowadays as the provinces do with Paris: a combination of admiration and contempt, a longing to be part of it and a pride at resisting. We want to know everything about them so that we can shrug our shoulders with a condescending air. We want to know the latest trends, the places to be seen, all the New York gossip so that we can emphasize how rooted we are in the profound reality of our own country. Americans seem to have made the opposite journey to that of Europe: their inferiority complex (being a nouveau riche, adolescent country whose history and culture have, for the most part, been imported) has developed into a superiority complex (lessons in expertise and efficiency, cultural xenophobia, corporate contempt, and advertising overkill).
As for the cultural exception to American cultural hegemony that is France, contrary to what a recently dismissed CEO had to say, it is not dead: it consists in churning out exceptionally tedious movies, exceptionally slapdash books and, all in all, works of art which are exceptionally pedantic and self-satisfied. It goes without saying that I include my own work in this sorry assessment.
The lobby in Windows on the World is beige. Everything important in America is beige. The walls are comforting, the carpet is thick, eggshell with a geometric pattern. Your loafers sink into the deep wool pile. The ground seems soft; that should have set us thinking.
“Keep it down!”
Half past eight and already the kids are hyper. How old are we when we start to wake up exhausted? I can’t stop yawning while they’re running around all over the place, zigzagging between the tables, almost knocking over an old lady with lilac hair.
“Stop it, guys!”
I try glaring at them, but still they don’t behave. I have no control over my sons; even when I get angry, they think I’m just kidding. They’re right: I am kidding. I don’t really believe it. Like all parents of my generation, I’m incapable of being strict. Our kids are badly brought up because they’re not brought up at all. At least, not by us, they’re brought up by cartoon channels. Thank you, Disney Channel, the world’s babysitter! Our kids are spoiled rotten, because we’re spoiled rotten. Jerry and David wind me up, but they have something over their mother; at least I still love them. That’s why I’m letting them cut class this week. They’re completely ecstatic about skipping school! I slump into my rust-colored chair and look round at the incredible view. “Unbelievable,” the brochure said: for once the advertising doesn’t lie. I’m blinded by the sunlight on the Atlantic. The skyscrapers carve out the blue like a cardboard stage set. In America, life is like a movie, since all movies are shot on location. All Americans are actors and their houses, their cars, and their desires all seem artificial. Truth is reinvented every morning in America. It’s a country that has decided to look like something on celluloid.
“Sir…”
The waitress is none too pleased at having to play cop. She brings back Jerry and David, who’ve just stolen a doughnut from a pair of stockbrokers and are using it as a Frisbee. I should slap them, but I can’t help smiling. I get up to apologize to the doughnut’s owners. They both work for Cantor Fitzgerald: a blonde who is sexy despite her Ralph Lauren suit (do girls really dress like that anymore?) and a stocky dark-haired man who seems cool in his Kenneth Cole suit. You don’t need to be a P.I. to work out they’re lovers. Would you take your wife to breakfast at the top of the World Trade Center? No…You leave your old lady at home and invite a colleague from the office for an early-morning tryst (the yuppie version of an afternoon tryst). I eavesdrop, I love listening at keyholes, especially when there aren’t any.
“I’m pretty bullish about the NASDAQ at the moment…” says the blonde in Ralph Lauren.
“Merril’s been upgrading the banking sector just on spec,” says the guy in Kenneth Cole.
“Leave your wife,” says the blonde in Ralph Lauren.
“So we can be a normal couple?” says the guy in Kenneth Cole.
“We’d never be a normal couple,” says the blonde in Ralph Lauren.
“You don’t hear me asking you to leave your husband,” says the guy in Kenneth Cole.
“I would if you asked me to,” says the blonde in Ralph Lauren.
“What we’ve got is special because it’s impossible,” says the guy in Kenneth Cole.
“I’m sick of only getting to see you in the morning or the afternoon,” says the blonde in Ralph Lauren.
“I’m worse at night,” says the guy in Kenneth Cole.
“Jeffrey Skilling invited me to L.A. in his private jet this weekend,” says the blonde in Ralph Lauren.
“Yeah? And how are you going to get that one past your husband?” says the guy in Kenneth Cole.
“None
