American Views Abroad

 
No Dog Days of Summer to help take minds off the mayhem spinning out of control almost everywhere this year. Not a bad idea to brace yourself before picking up the papers in the morning. There were the hundreds killed off in villages in northern Iraq in suicide bombings; the army strongly suggesting families of those to be deployed yet again for another 15 months in Iraq should stay on base in Germany rather than returning to the US --- '....it also demonstrates how the gap between American society and its volunteer army has widened as the Iraq war has dragged on. Many people there (in the US) have just moved on.' www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/16/news/troops.php and the army suicide rate hit a 26 year high www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/16/america/NA-GEN-US-Army-Suicides.php.

How does one even begin to explain sub-prime mortgages to German readers? Well, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung did a good job trying to make sense of the madness that has taken over these last years on Thursday. The bundling of loans and mortgages with hardly any down payment being sent on to others who make money off of what? What it did in fact convey to its readers is that no one knows who is responsible or who to turn to. It's like facing an abyss. A German TV hard-hitting journal, Frontal on ZDF, took on the privatization of electricity companies here and the reaction of people was one of anger and a determination to start changing companies. A neighbor confided that for the first time in her life she will not vote in any upcoming elections until those responsible for selling things off take responsibility for their actions. Others started using the word crooks a lot more than one usually hears here.

To get away from all that and the weather which is not the usual lovely August of other years, the only way to flee is through novels. Down home is lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn and Pete Hamill is good at bringing it all together in North River. Unfortunately, nothing could ever top Snow in August, the ultimate Brooklyn novel in the years after WW II, but it was good to get away from current themes and to remember that once upon a time you didn't have to have millions to live in Manhattan. Picking up the New York strain, Alice McDermott's After This was on the windowsill waiting to be read. It is a gem of a novel that so depicts the post World War II Long Island of the fifties and sixties with its Irish family and Catholic upbringing and war, both WW II and Viet Nam, you have to pinch yourself when putting the book down that you are in Europe in 2007. No, After This is not an escape from the present, but it does put what's happening today in perspective.
- posted by Gloria @ 6:17 PM