Item: 1 copy of The American by Henry James

This book was my airplane reading, which I finished tonight.  The book was published in 1877 and is the story of one Christopher Newman (the title character) who has made money in America and is now at leisure in Paris for a different angle on life.  He is also wife-hunting, and sets his sights on a French countess named Claire.  Her family is in reduced circumstances, but still maintains an inflexible pride in their class.  Newman manages to get past this and get them to consider letting him ("a commercial person") marry their daughter, mainly because he doesn't acknowledge that any class/background barriers should exist.  He has almost what we call today a sense of entitlement, refusing to recognize the European standards by which he might be not good enough.   It's an absorbing story, with dramatic elements like a deathbed confession and entry into a convent.

At one point early in the book, Newman is offered assistance in the French language by a poor citizen of Paris named Monsieur Nioche, who says this: "Would it please you to receive instruction in our beautiful language?"  This struck me immediately with its simplicity and complete lack of irony.  The language represents love of a country and a culture that seem like such old-fashioned attitudes.

By contrast, modern affection for America, if there is any, is rarely expressed with reference to any sort of emotion.  Statements of pride and patriotism are about principles and ideals, not about a poor foolish love for the very accents of one's people.  You can't unquestioningly love your country now, or at least you shouldn't.  And who's to say that this is a wrong attitude?  Dissent is part of what we are founded on.

Newman explains his country this way to one of his aristocratic friends: "Being an American, it was impossible you should remain what you were born."  I like that a lot as a summation.   I heard an analogy last week that New Zealand is to Australia as Canada is to the US.   That is, the regional attitudes there parallel the sense that an American isn't likely to care about mistakenly being called Canadian, but a Canadian probably will care about being thought an American, and quite possibly offended.  Interesting, I think, that the Canadians seem more attached to their own uniqueness than we do.