America's literary exceptionalism

Israeli-American writer and translator Aviya Kushner, who's undertaking reading the Bible in English after many years of studying it in Hebrew, thinks that Americans aren't uninterested in foreign matters or even reading books about foreign places. But she laments that they quite often want others "to do the heavy lifting required to make a cultural connection."

That means novels about foreign places by Americans, and virtually no literature in translation. As the United States now has a president with at least one foreign parent, shouldn't our interest in seeking out authentic, non-Americanized voices be on the rise?

It 'taint necessarily so, as she lays out in a lengthy piece in the Wilson Quarterly that ties in some of our other cultural peccadillos:

"We don’t have much time, so we want a taste, some fast food to go. And so we read ethnic literature the way we down an ethnic meal. We can get a burrito almost anywhere, but it’s often mildly spiced, adjusted just for us, and wrapped for those in a rush. So we’re eating a translated burrito, and we’re reading a world prepared especially for us. But we don’t believe anything is missing. After all, we eat 'ethnic' food, and often."

The time crunch can't explain away American reluctance to go to the direct source of cultural difference. We're reading less, in part, because of our hurly-burly ways (not much different from the rest of the developed world). There's plenty of buzz about the Amazon Kindle becoming the next great digital phenonenon, and one that could further undercut the decline of the newspaper and publishing industries.

But more than anything, what I think Kushner is describing is the nagging trait of American exceptionalism applied to literature, especially literature written in another language. This shouldn't come as a surprise given our exceptionalist tendencies with food, music, art, sports and many other aspects of American life. We welcome those from around the world, but only if they're willing to bring what they have and fold it into the American experience, which is constantly evolving.

This is also the substance of Barack Obama's narrative. His Kenyan father came to America in search of educational opportunity, and left behind a son who after some time and soul-searching forged a unique American identity for himself. And used it to become not only the first African-American president, but perhaps the most internationalist one we might ever have voted into office.

What isn't unique is that he shares an American story with millions of immigrant stock (probably most of us). His pursuit of being an American, in his own way, has held so much appeal.

Kushner laments what she sees, I suppose, as a watered-down globalism:

"It’s easy to miss the subtitle factor as we congratulate ourselves on our globalized worldview, our ethnic restaurants in every downtown. Sure, we see some Spanish, on subway doors, and in political speeches when the candidate wants some Texas votes. But it’s a bit like learning about the Middle East by listening to Shakira, a Colombian/Italian/ Lebanese pop singer. You get a little bit of the rhythm, but not the whole thing."

I don't begrudge her the first point. We do seem to think -- and I'm exaggerating just a bit here -- that because we eat more ethnic food (and more food in general), know a little Spanish because of a talking dog in a taco commercial and now have a Kenyan-Kansan president with an Indonesian half-sister who's married to a Chinese-Canadian this is proof of some international enlightenment.

But I'm not sure what she expects the typical American citizen, living in the United States, to do to acquire a more authentic global perspective. Reading international literature certainly could foster some greater understanding, but I hope this isn't her only corrective:

"What is going on in our reading habits is that we want to know, but we want to go home at night to an Anglophone dorm, instead of negotiating with a French-speaking neighbor to stop cooking that awful- smelling thing at 3 am. We want someone to address us directly, to write something just for us. Bilingual writers can slip in locales that speak to us, or brand names we recognize, or concerns that we have as Americans, such as whether sending an elderly parent to a nursing home is a reasonably compassionate choice. That’s why they tend to fare better than writers whose work is translated, who focus on whether that new yurt was worth the cow- price. No matter that it’s the same big issue: whether the cost is justified, whether the larger goal justifies the sacrifice. We want those concerns translated into familiar terms. We want to see our lives, our exact worries, already there on the page."

Again, I think her expectations are quite a bit high for everyday Americans to become such literary adventurists. What she doesn't address here is how novel-reading by Americans is not especially high, regardless of whether it's in translation:

"America, protected by water on two sides and friends on two borders, is at a crucial point in its history. We are at war in a part of the world that speaks Arabic, a language woefully underrepresented in American schools and bookshelves. For the first time, an immigrant tongue— Spanish— is close to becoming a second language. From the beginning, America’s future has depended on deep curiosity, not just the look and sound of it. We have gone to the continent’s edge, we have gone to the moon, we have created forms of government that were previously just dreams. The pioneers knew it, the colonists knew it: There are certain things we must know personally if we want to create a dream of a future."

The new administration has the tough task of trying to become more internationalist in its diplomacy. That's got to be one of the first steps toward encouraging greater cultural curiosity among Americans toward the rest of the world, as it is. And now how we demand they see us.

But it's always going to run into the persistent mindset of exceptionalism, which remains the greatest impediment to the aspirations Kushner envisions.

For what it's worth, I do try to read in translation. But it's not about doing so in the spirit of internationalism, but because I like reading these particular authors: Pessoa, Vargas Llosa, Mann, Flaubert.

Yet I also confess probably three-quarters of the literature I read comes from American, English, Irish and Canadian authors.

So Aviya, I'm guilty as charged.

There are some good sites devoted to the subject of international literature, such as this one and this one.