things I discovered; The Anglo Files
Things I discovered (or re-discovered) yesterday:
1. Grilled Nutella sandwiches on sourdough are AWESOME. (I knew this, but this is the first time in a while that I've actually had both of these things on hand at the same time.)
2. Apparently I still know the theme song to Doogie Howser, M.D. (And this is the second time I've mentioned Doogie Howser in a post this week. Weird.)
3. I really, really dislike grading. This worries me. It's one thing when I'm reading a lot of bad papers, and I don't really expect to ever *like* it, but I'm so reluctant to do it, even when I expect the papers to be at least okay, that it's honestly a bit ridiculous.
I also finished reading The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British by Sarah Lyall. It was interesting, I suppose, and the anecdotes were frequently funny. The Brits come off pretty badly in this book: neurotic and childlike about sex, prudish, repressed, and alcoholics all in all but name--though they are also charmingly self-deprecating (though Lyall finds some fault here, too, because she finds it insincere) and fond of eccentricity. But the author comes at the subject from such a "gee willikers!" angle that I found myself distrusting the book at times, even though all the anecdotes in the book could be true. She'd set up these really simplistic differences between Brits and Americans that just made me think she was tone-deaf about Americans. She presents the American parents at her daughters' school as all relaxed and pro-sex-ed, and the Brits all uptight and scandalized--as though Americans could never think sex-ed classes were a bad idea, or be the slightest bit prudish about anything. Very early on in the book, she lists as a sign of her adjustment to life in Britain the fact that she now "recoil[s] when people in social situations ask direct questions about one's salary or the price of one's home"--which I'm pretty sure is just plain *rude* no matter which side of the pond you live on, not some strange British quirk of reticence.
The chapter on class is particularly odd in this regard, as Lyall seems bemused by the whole *idea* of class from the outset: shocked (shocked!) that the private schools she's looking into brag about their famous parents and alums; bowled over by the idea that goods and garments can mark out different classes. (This is especially silly because her "About the Author" page tells us quite clearly that she was educated at Exeter and Yale--so she probably knows a few things about posh schools, and while they may or may not be bragging about her, she's certainly bragging about them.) She writes, "Is it that straightforward, that nakedly obvious? Can products, vocabulary, clothes, and pronunciation instantly mark you as one thing or another? Beats me" (116). Really???? The first time you've ever encountered this crazy phenomenon is in Britain? Americans don't have accents and designer labels? At the very end of the chapter, she locates her difficulty with this in her Americanness: "But I am too foreign and my country too young to understand properly all the nuances of the British class system. I can't, for example, sort out the layers of meaning in Mary Killen's observation that people from good backgrounds 'say "toilet" as a joke, because they know that they are above the issue.' This is confusing to me--people who say what they don't mean, don't mean what they say, and use 'toilet' satirically" (125). Right--because she's a straight-talkin', honest American, and this is completely foreign to her. No American would ever use slang or lower-class speech satirically because he or she knows no one would actually mistake him or her for a member of that lower class. I don't doubt that there are very real differences between the way class is expressed in Britain and in the US, and that it could have different meanings. I would have liked to read about that. But the author's wide-eyed American persona made the whole thing rather hard to take seriously.
Basically, if her standard of an American is someone who is forthright to the point of rudeness, is comfortable with declaring her own accomplishments to others and never downplays them, has no hangups about sex, and doesn't see class like Stephen Colbert doesn't see race, then I could see how Britain might perhaps come as something of a shock. If one has a different standard, though, the difference between countries, at least as presented in Lyall's book, might come off as a difference of degree rather than of kind.
1. Grilled Nutella sandwiches on sourdough are AWESOME. (I knew this, but this is the first time in a while that I've actually had both of these things on hand at the same time.)
2. Apparently I still know the theme song to Doogie Howser, M.D. (And this is the second time I've mentioned Doogie Howser in a post this week. Weird.)
3. I really, really dislike grading. This worries me. It's one thing when I'm reading a lot of bad papers, and I don't really expect to ever *like* it, but I'm so reluctant to do it, even when I expect the papers to be at least okay, that it's honestly a bit ridiculous.
I also finished reading The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British by Sarah Lyall. It was interesting, I suppose, and the anecdotes were frequently funny. The Brits come off pretty badly in this book: neurotic and childlike about sex, prudish, repressed, and alcoholics all in all but name--though they are also charmingly self-deprecating (though Lyall finds some fault here, too, because she finds it insincere) and fond of eccentricity. But the author comes at the subject from such a "gee willikers!" angle that I found myself distrusting the book at times, even though all the anecdotes in the book could be true. She'd set up these really simplistic differences between Brits and Americans that just made me think she was tone-deaf about Americans. She presents the American parents at her daughters' school as all relaxed and pro-sex-ed, and the Brits all uptight and scandalized--as though Americans could never think sex-ed classes were a bad idea, or be the slightest bit prudish about anything. Very early on in the book, she lists as a sign of her adjustment to life in Britain the fact that she now "recoil[s] when people in social situations ask direct questions about one's salary or the price of one's home"--which I'm pretty sure is just plain *rude* no matter which side of the pond you live on, not some strange British quirk of reticence.
The chapter on class is particularly odd in this regard, as Lyall seems bemused by the whole *idea* of class from the outset: shocked (shocked!) that the private schools she's looking into brag about their famous parents and alums; bowled over by the idea that goods and garments can mark out different classes. (This is especially silly because her "About the Author" page tells us quite clearly that she was educated at Exeter and Yale--so she probably knows a few things about posh schools, and while they may or may not be bragging about her, she's certainly bragging about them.) She writes, "Is it that straightforward, that nakedly obvious? Can products, vocabulary, clothes, and pronunciation instantly mark you as one thing or another? Beats me" (116). Really???? The first time you've ever encountered this crazy phenomenon is in Britain? Americans don't have accents and designer labels? At the very end of the chapter, she locates her difficulty with this in her Americanness: "But I am too foreign and my country too young to understand properly all the nuances of the British class system. I can't, for example, sort out the layers of meaning in Mary Killen's observation that people from good backgrounds 'say "toilet" as a joke, because they know that they are above the issue.' This is confusing to me--people who say what they don't mean, don't mean what they say, and use 'toilet' satirically" (125). Right--because she's a straight-talkin', honest American, and this is completely foreign to her. No American would ever use slang or lower-class speech satirically because he or she knows no one would actually mistake him or her for a member of that lower class. I don't doubt that there are very real differences between the way class is expressed in Britain and in the US, and that it could have different meanings. I would have liked to read about that. But the author's wide-eyed American persona made the whole thing rather hard to take seriously.
Basically, if her standard of an American is someone who is forthright to the point of rudeness, is comfortable with declaring her own accomplishments to others and never downplays them, has no hangups about sex, and doesn't see class like Stephen Colbert doesn't see race, then I could see how Britain might perhaps come as something of a shock. If one has a different standard, though, the difference between countries, at least as presented in Lyall's book, might come off as a difference of degree rather than of kind.