American Views Abroad

 
Elfriede Jelinek is interviewed in today's New York Times magazine in the article A Gloom of Her Own. One question posed to Jelinek who won the Nobel Prize for Literature is 'Why do you suppose European artists are so much more politically engaged than American ones?' Her reply is: 'The smaller the group, the easier it is for more people to argue and enter into discussions. The US is vast. It's too large. The intellectuals hide out in enclaves, in big cities or universities, like a bunch of chickens hiding from a fox.' www.nytimes.com

Last Tuesday I posted a summary of an interview Isabel Allende gave a German paper. In that article Allende is asked if the deep rift that has developed politically in the US is noticeable in her everyday life. Does she, for example, have Republican friends she no longer talks to? No, she replied, she hasn't any Republican friends and she is lucky to live in California which went for Kerry this time. The US has an advantage because it is so vast and spacious and conflicts tend to get lost in this distance. She then recalled her time in Chile during a politically difficult period and commented that Chile is so much smaller in size and population and thus it was impossible to avoid being confronted with conflicting points of view.

- posted by Gloria @ 1:16 PM