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Leamington Letters #73: An American Dream

11/3/2014

22 Comments

 
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Mish's (carrot) birthday cake
I love America. I love the myth-making of Americana even more.

As regular readers will know, my 20th century music vault is primarily American, with embarrassing quantities of Dylan, the Band, the Grateful Dead, the Airplane, Miles Davis, John Coltrane as well as hours of old blues, folkand jazz. My book shelves feature swathes of (randomly, as they spring to mind) Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, John Updike, Don DeLillo, Paul Auster, Hemingway, Hammett, O’Neill, Lowell, Berryman, Hunter S Thompson and Saul Bellow. I am obsessed by baseball in general and the Red Sox in particular. I count Boston as one of my favourite cities in the world, and am proud to number many Americans amongst my closest friends.

But any European of a certain age will struggle to resolve the ambivalence one feels about the US.

We grew up under the shadow of the Cuban crisis and the struggle for black emancipation. We moved on to the Vietnam war, what the Vietnamese call the American War. We watched fascinated as the Watergate scandal unfolded. We were horrified by the assassinations of Martin Luther King, and John and Robert Kennedy.

For us, at that time, this was America. And these were American events.

But were they?

As I learned on my first visit many years ago, the United States is not in any sense united. It is not a single, monolithic force but, rather, a series of parochial regions which are as different from each other as … well, Europe and America.

And for every event there was an opposite; for every thesis an antithesis. For every racist in the south, there was an idealist struggling to change structures and attitudes. The Vietnam war created the anti-war movement and the Weather Underground. Watergate gave new life to a free press and investigative journalism.

The American Dream, "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement", still exists and is still dreamt by millions of Americans.

But America has the highest incarceration rate and the largest prison population in the world. It has the highest obesity rates. It spends some 280 billion dollars on the prescription drugs that kill more people than cocaine and heroin: one in five Americans are taking at least five prescription drugs; one in 6 are on food stamps. One in three children in the US live in homes without a father. The US national debt is $17 trillion. America has more lawyers more capita than any country in the world.

It is still possible to live that dream but it seems that the majority of Americans live a nightmare.

We don’t see this, of course. When I sat in Wilde’s last evening to celebrate the birthday of Michelle, from America, listening to American music played by Clayton Denwood, from America, we were celebrating what unites us rather than what divides.

And when I land at Logan Airport in three weeks, I will feel instantly at home. Because we in the UK and Europe cannot feel superior. We have the same problems but, as in so many things, America does problems on a larger scale, with a greater intensity and a higher profile.

Here’s to that devalued phrase but not, I hope, devalued concept: our special relationship. This land is our land.

Today from the everysmith vault: David Bromberg, Try Me One More Time. 

22 Comments
WillB
11/3/2014 05:19:34

I think you are too easy on the US. As leaders of the free world - their words - they have a responsibility to act ethically at all times. They have clearly failed to do this consistently in our life times. Liking Dylan does not mean liking America.

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Allan
11/3/2014 05:22:13

What you have done is identified the contradictions within US society, which as you also say are the same contradictions as the UK, but writ large. Interesting that all the writers and musicians you love were formed in opposition to the US ruling class.

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Pat
11/3/2014 09:33:48

That's a damning set of stats. what's worse is that they are getting worse. Where is Obama? What the hell is he (not) doing about this?

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Max
13/3/2014 10:09:44

Will, Allan, Pat. Yes, yes and yes. And especially to the point re Obama who has been a profound disappointment. Turns out he was just another politician.

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Doctor D
11/3/2014 21:17:58

Quote # 1:- From Edmond O'Brien's newspaper owner in John Ford's Liberty Valance:-

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

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Doctor D
11/3/2014 21:20:39

Quote # 2:- From 'No Country For Old Men':-

"This country will kill you in a heartbeat and still people love it."

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Doctor D
11/3/2014 22:02:21

Quote # 3:- From Hyman Roth:-

"I loved baseball ever since Arnold Rothstein fixed the World Series in 1919."

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Max
13/3/2014 09:52:42

Think that's probably your quota for the day. Love the final one.

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CJ
12/3/2014 02:42:20

Glad you're listening to David Bromberg. He is much under-valued. Not of course by Dylan - although the album which the two of them were working on in 1992 came to nothing apart from those glorious four tracks.

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Ryan
12/3/2014 03:46:47

It wasn't called Americana then but Bromberg was doing it. Story is that Dylan and Neil Young went to see a Bromberg gig and Neil suggested to Bob that he worked on something with Bromberg. They did 26 songs in all, but only the four are out there. Bob apparently hated the mix and told Bromberg to wipe the tapes. Bet he didn't. One day we'll get them. Instead, we got Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong.

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Ryan
12/3/2014 04:30:00

... And there is nothing wrong with either of those two albums. But judging by the four wedo have from the Bromberg Sessions, I know which I would prefer.

John B
12/3/2014 06:36:22

We Europeans have always embraced those Americans who struggled to be embraced by Americans. I am thinking especially of the jazz guys in the post-war years, of Hendrix in the late 60s, and of course those countless draft-avoiders who moved through our universities and slept on our sofas. This was not anti-America! but anti American government. Which leads into a discussion of the nature of patriotism. Which is always claimed by the ruling class as being defined by what they do. Oh, and Big Bill in the 50s ...

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Ellie
12/3/2014 06:41:09

Big Bill! It' strange that we in the UK and the French welcomed black musicians when they couldn't get a gig in the States. Maybe because they were also political ....

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Max
13/3/2014 10:05:16

I suspect that if you were black, you were political by definition in those times and maybe even today.

myers
13/3/2014 03:40:22

As our friend announced ...hey I'm Joey B and Wildes replied sorry we only serve Joey A's here!

I love America because of its diversity and because of its faults.. its the eccentric uncle I always wanted!

Three of my best friends are American and serves them right!

Bruce gets my vote with...


The McNicholas, the Posalski's, the Smiths, Zerillis, too
The Blacks, the Irish, Italians, the Germans and the Jews
Come across the water a thousand miles from home
With nothin in their bellies but the fire down below

They died building the railroads worked to bones and skin
They died in the fields and factories names scattered in the wind
They died to get here a hundred years ago they're still dying now
" The hands that built this country we are always trying to keep down!"
Go safe Go Sox! [ written in Fort Myers!

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Max
13/3/2014 09:57:45

LOL. I remember Joey. Truck guy. Supported the Yankees and the Bruins, right? It was a huge night for Americans in Wilde's as I recall. Too many returning home - must be the baseball season.

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myers
13/3/2014 12:30:44

Dead on bro! You are the "winning-most" person I know and I count on you to do the math!

Charlotte Ford
13/3/2014 04:31:03

I have as yet never visited the U.S.A. I have an increasingly jaded picture I had of it since those happy times of listening to and loving The Doors, Dylan, The Velvet Underground, Captain Beefheart and Neil Young to name but a few. That picture stems from the fact that a political system which only the very wealthy can get into is not a formula that offers hope of a fair society in terms of distribution of wealth. My regular connections with friends old and new ' across the pond' via the tool of social media that is Face-book has at least enabled me to see how the people themselves shine through. But what they have to shine through is a dense fog in terms of vested interests, draconian laws and statutary rights. I really enjoyed reading your blog, thanks Max .

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Charlotte Ford
13/3/2014 08:10:41

There is an appalling typo in my comment, so glaring there is no need to point it out. Can only wince and apologise !

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Max
13/3/2014 09:51:09

Welcome back! As you say, merely a typo rather than a solecism. Xx

Sean
13/3/2014 07:01:46

The most American thing about America is they will never admit they have any problem to face, or issue to deal with, as it would be unAmerican to accept any flaw whatsoever in the American Dream.

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Max
13/3/2014 10:02:36

My (badly-made) point is that one needs to distinguish between the concept of America and Americans. The former is a stereotype which we have collectively created; the latter, in my experience, great!

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    Max Smith

    European writer, radical, restaurateur and Red Sox fan. 70-something husband, father, step-father, grandfather and son. Resident in Warwick, England.

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