January 31, 2006
Keillor on Lévy
In Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, Garrison Keillor did not review Bernard-Henry Levi’s new book. Instead, his article used American Vertigo as a prop in what amounted to an appeal to the self-righteousness of his Lake Wobegone constituency. One can understand commissioning a just-the-folks commentator to respond to an assessment of America in 2005 by a French “rockstar intellectual,” but one would also expect that the editors would curb his most flagrant and unsustained attacks. The blatantly antagonistic tone, evident from the second sentence, is nowhere backed up by nuanced criticism. At one point Keillor writes, “Lévy is quite comfortable with phrases like ‘as always in America.’ Bombast comes naturally to him . . . As always with French writers, Lévy is short on the facts, long on conclusions.” The parallelism does little to remove Keillor’s foot from his mouth or leaven the arrogance of his statement. I’m surprised that there has not been more comment about this piece on weblogs—it's had me in a tizzy since Saturday morning—and wonder if any letters to the editor will turn up in next week’s NYTBR.
UPDATE (2/10): After I posted this I came across plenty of condemnations of Keillor's review, including this piece in the current New Republic.