To Charles:
Americans are dead set on claiming VN for
It just so happened that VN became internationally known as an “American”
writer. I put the “American” in quotes because the word when applied to VN does
not, clearly, mean the same thing as when applied to Poe, or Hemingway, or Melville.
It should always be qualified by various circumlocutions, the best of which is
perhaps “a writer of English prose at present holding American citizenship” (John
Updike). And Americans are the first to admit that “American” “seems like an odd
adjective to describe his career” (Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, p. 66). I do not deny the European element in VN’s cultural identity;
and, as a Russian, cannot but see the Russian element. But what I do find “objectionable” (if I may) is an attempt to
forgo the “American” altogether, to try and make do without the adjective, to
exclude this experience from his life as irrelevant superficies. I’m not the
one to judge whether VN was more European than American, or vice versa, but I
cannot agree that he was “essentially un-American.” Probably, it’s a matter of
phraseology. “Essentially un-American” sounds too categorical to me, as if the
ocean between Europe and America were unsailable and as if to be European were
somehow more commendable. It is the exclusiveness that I find “objectionable.”
It’s almost like Kingsley Amis speaking to his son, in 1984: “I’ve finally
figured out why I don’t like Americans.” – [Martin] waited. – “Because everyone
there is either a Jew or a hick.” So much for the civilized debate from Sir
Kingsley.
SK