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Living Section of the San Bernardino SUN May 16, 2004 Issue 
Call of the Mall By Paco Underhill Simon & Schuster 2004 
Shop 'Till You Drop We Americans elude pat definitions and characterizations. Blending the regional topography of the vast portion of the North American continent we occupy, with our cultural and ethnic diversity, has spawned varied American cultures that defy a uniform description. Ask a foreigner to define an American and one would get as many different answers as there are French in France or Iraqis in Iraq. Hampton Sides, editor of "Outside" magazine and author of the best-selling "Ghost Soldiers," explores these quirky aspects of the American character and culture in his brand new book "Americana: Dispatches from the New Frontier." He describes in the "Introduction" how the idea for this book was born. After failing to shake off one of the obnoxiously pesty guides in Marrakech, he then befriends him and goes on to enjoy with him many a late night discussion. "How did you know I was American," asks Sides. "Confident," the guide answers, "Confident like you own the world. But open." "The older I get," writes the author, "the surer I am that I have no idea what America 'means.' 'Confident but open' may be as good as any description I've heard for it... More than anything else, our confidence comes from our openness." "Americana" is a collection of 30 pieces, each describing some unusual American subculture. Some of the pieces are especially absorbing. I was particularly taken with the piece "In Darkest Bohemia" - a detailed expose of the Bohemian Grove, an exclusive summer retreat for the all male, ultra conservative members of the Bohemian Club. Ironically, today's Bohemian Club does not resemble in the least the original Bohemian Club and has nothing to do with bohemians. Genuine bohemians - San Francisco men interested in art, music and literature - founded the Club in 1872. Being bohemian, they were unable to pay the club's bills and out of necessity invited rich businessmen and professional men with artistic and cultural leanings to join the Club. While touring America, Oscar Wilde visited the Club and quipped: "I have never seen so many well-dressed, well-fed, businesslike-looking bohemians in all my life." Herbert Hoover, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Nixon were members. Today's membership boasts Bush, Sr., Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld and Charlton Heston. The Bohemian Grove is an impenetrable-for-non-members three thousand acre retreat on the banks of the Russian River in Northern California. The author's descriptions of his futile efforts to pass beyond the "Checkpoint Charlie" gatehouse and the "Cold War Berlin" barbed wire are humorous. But above all the descriptions of this totally unbohemian enclave of the Bohemian Club make its efforts at isolation from reality and the mainstream of life appear pathetic. "A Murder in Falkner," the Mississippi town settled by William Faulkner's ancestors, is a true story soggy with that special Southern ethos that might be taken for something invented by Tennessee Williams or Faulkner himself. "Gay Eminence" is the story of Mel White, ghostwriter for Jerry Falwell, Pat Roberson, Jim and Tammy Bakker and Billy Graham. While putting a populist sort of spin on their pedantic and unbending morality, White was actually masquerading as an upright family man and fighting a loosing battle with his homosexual leanings. One can only speculate about the anger felt at his duplicity by many Moral Majority followers when White came out of the closet. The essays and stories in "Americana" were written over 15 years but their essence is timeless. For whatever reason we seem to have a perpetual fascination with such offbeat stories that lurk just beneath the surface of American mainstream life. Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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