Hell yeah, Garrison

A recent flurry of press around the new Prairie Home Companion movie, and Garrison Keillor in particular, brought me back to Keillor's January takedown of Bernard-Henri Levy in the New York Times. Keillor was reviewing Levy's new book, which in turn is based on an Atlantic Monthly series in which Levy tours and gawks at American culture and history, "in the spirit of Tocqueville." It is an execrable book, managing to be simultaneously inane, self-obsessed, and pretentious. Let me spell it out: if a Livejournal and the Jerry Springer show had a baby and hired Tom Wolfe as their nanny, that poor child would grow up to be Bernard-Henri Levy's American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville. But Keillor does a more thorough job of disembowelment than I could hope to accomplish:

And what's with the flurries of rhetorical questions? Is this how the French talk or is it something they save for books about America? "What is a Republican? What distinguishes a Republican in the America of today from a Democrat?" Lévy writes, like a student padding out a term paper. "What does this experience tell us?" he writes about the Mall of America. "What do we learn about American civilization from this mausoleum of merchandise, this funeral accumulation of false goods and nondesires in this end-of-the-world setting? What is the effect on the Americans of today of this confined space, this aquarium, where only a semblance of life seems to subsist?" And what is one to make of the series of questions - 20 in a row - about Hillary Clinton, in which Lévy implies she is seeking the White House to erase the shame of the Lewinsky affair? Was Lévy aware of the game 20 Questions, commonly played on long car trips in America? Are we to read this passage as a metaphor of American restlessness? Does he understand how irritating this is? Does he? Do you? May I stop now?

I encourage you to read the rest, especially if you (like me), considered canceling your Atlantic subscription while Levy's series ran. It'll give you closure, I promise.

UPDATE: As I was writing this, Matt was writing an almost identical post, except he expands the circle of hate to include not only Bernard-Henri but also Christopher Hitchens, who got pissy at Garrison for his snarky review. DRA-MA! Well worth the read.