Buy this book

Andrew Haydon
posted 18 July 2006

Misleadingly marketed in an attempt to cash-in on the recent success of Michael Moore’s hugely popular fact-lite series of books on America, Gary Younge’s book turns out to be a collection of a number of the Guardian America correspondent’s op-ed and colour pieces from the newspaper. Intended largely for the US market, the book’s publication on this side of the Atlantic is a bit of a puzzle. 

Arranged chronologically under four headings - War, Race, Politics and Culture - the collection is desperately in need of a strong editorial hand. Interested parties could probably make a better fist of it themselves: go to the Guardian website, do a search for ‘Gary Younge,’ and copy all the articles which appeal into a Word document. Hey presto! Conscientious editors may want to go a bit further, and try to do more than shuffling the articles into spurious categories and arranging them by date. Younge, in his brief introduction to the book, makes a point of noting that he has not corrected original errors of judgment or fact, so readers can experience them all over again between different covers.

Younge isn’t a bad writer, but tends to be solid rather than scintillating. It is hard to see what has suggested the need for this collection of his work, other than America’s unending craze for representations of itself, and its increasing dominance of the world stage to the extent that everyone else feels obliged to mug up on their facts. A logical reply would be the ongoing ‘War on Terror’ with which the first of the books four sections deals. Oddly, this section throws up by far the fewest number of insights in the book. It does, though, offer a chance to revisit a piece on the 7/7 bombings in London last year. Quite what this is doing in a book about America is unclear. That the vast majority of the articles in the book were originally written for an English audience is made wilfully clear again and again. America is constantly being compared to Britain, both favourably and unfavourably, but always unnecessarily. Readers could probably do the math for themselves, but the repeated references add to a feeling of parochialism.

The section on race is far better. While The War On Terror (TWOT) is an ongoing debate, and so comment pieces about it tend toward reiteration that Younge thinks it is A Bad Thing, there is less debate over whether racism is good or not in the British press, and correspondingly Younge needs to come up with something a bit more interesting than anti-war foot-stamping. The selection of pieces here form an interesting reader on a few aspects of race relations in America. There are interviews with Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan; a vigorously argued article on using the word ‘Nigger’; an intelligent defence of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom character; and a piece on Claudette Colvin, the 15-year-old black girl who pre-dated Rosa Parks in civil disobedience on the Montgomery buses, but got pregnant and was consequently abandoned as a possible figurehead for the Civil Rights Movement.

The culture section is also interesting, offering a selection of left-leaning interviews and features on various high profile American figures and oddments from Jon Stewart and Michael Moore through to the export of Sesame Street and a 12-book series of novels selling in their millions in the US which are based on the biblical version of the end of the world.

The section on politics - well, it rather depends where you stand politically. Younge consistently toes the most standard anti-war, anti-racism, anti-Israel, left-liberal lines available. If this is your bag, then you’ll have probably lapped up all these columns when they were first published. If you prefer your opposition a bit more incisive or imaginative then you might want to skip this bit. If you don’t agree with it in the slightest then there’ll be plenty here to convince you off your enemies’ bone-headed refusal to listen to you in favour of ideological dogma. In common with all the other sections, Politics is immeasurably improved when Younge hits the road and reports on some of the more extreme parts of America’s political scene, or the report on liberals in Muncie, Indiana – America’s ‘Middletown’ – or  the campaign trail reports from Howard Dean’s presidential attempt.

If the book has a failing, beyond its abysmal lack of editing, it is Younge’s attraction to the extremities of his subject. America is a vast country, which supports a staggering range of opinions and beliefs. By often focussing on the furthest flung, Younge creates a skewed picture. No matter how dearly he may wish it, the US is not on the verge of collapse. There is a solid, stable middle ground of millions who exist without comment, attract little attention and make for poor copy, but who remain crucial to an understanding of the world’s last remaining superpower.