I recently tried reading a modern, humorous book about everyday life and I found it incredibly hard to get into, in fact I have given up. I rarely give up on fiction – the last time was because of the inherent racism of the writer – but I found it impossible to get into the everyday world of an American, to learn what one has to do to walk the streets and enter the doors of America. Why one’s friend desires one’s wife, the politics of each relationship, the Seinfeld like minutiae of simply living.
I can see the humour of the book but found it boring. My failing I am sure. Whereas Team of Rivals about the political life of Abraham Lincoln and his circle is not only easy to read but illuminating and in a very real way gives me more insight into modern America than the former book. Why? Because no one can know who they are without knowing where they have come from and I have always judged Americans by my knowledge of the countries they emigrated from but that is a terrible mistake. America made herself through the ideas and energy of millions of people and those ideas are the foundation of the everyday.
The fight for them is as revealing as it is educational, as pertinent now as it was one hundred and fifty years ago. The foibles of what to wear, how to shake a hand, how to dress, how to smile at a party are the daubs of paint upon a canvas that is a country built by sheer hard work.