Jeremy
Leven
In 1980, Jeremy Leven published his first novel, a complex and very funny tale about the mad scientist Harry Wolper. What Dr. Wolper has to say in his diary about the celebrations of the Fourth of July and about the myth of the melting pot is the exact opposite of Lazarus' view. - Jeremy Leven, Creator (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981), pp. 309f.
Potato salad has always seemed to me to be a particularly apt dish for 4
July, representing an ingenious conglomeration of unlikely elements to make
something fairly tasty. That these vegetables are able to get along at all in
one dish is a miracle to me akin to the ostensible melting pot we have all come
together today to make a lot of noise about.
This is, of course, a myth. There is no more a melting pot here in
America than a dish without lettuce and tomatoes is a salad. No matter, the
distinction is unimportant. The streets were not, in fact, paved with gold, and
religious tolerance is neither better nor worse here than anywhere else. Jews
and Catholics maintain their distance, blacks and whites fortify themselves and
prepare for battle. Young and old starve alike and view each other with little
friendliness or regard. We are an armed camp, entrenched to protect what little
territory we have left, and brotherly love be damned. We are not cooperators
who built this country, and this is not a democracy. We national engineers were
competitors and enslavers, and we built us here a republic, to foster
competition, protect the interests of the aristocratic founding fathers, and
assure that a class system could sustain itself just like in Mother England, in
spite of our having no history, a remarkable achievement at the very least.
It is a country put together with tape and pins, and its longevity is a
testimony not to the constitutional design, but to the real wisdom of the
founders in taking into account the true adhesive that would bind us together:
greed. What is self-evident to me is that it is my life, my liberty,
and my pursuit of happiness, not yours. Yours is your problem.
And when it came time to form our Constitution, no less a figure than
Patrick Henry himself, flaming patriot, founding father, banged on the desk,
screamed at the convention. What did they mean, 'We, the people'! What
right had they to say, 'We, the people'! Who gave them the power to speak the
language of, 'We, the people'! The people gave them no power to use their name!
It was hardly possible to write three words without some patriot
announcing that no one was speaking for him and mind your own business!
No, our fabric is not designed to hold the imprint of relationships
well. It is woven to show fifty separate and distinct stars, set well off by
themselves from the original thirteen stripes. I often marvel, with pain, great
pain, at what a solitary life we have provided here, at how little warmth there
is to go along with our heralded freedom.
I wonder whether there is any hope for us descendants of those with the
stamina and guts to withstand the vast sea and leave everything they held dear
to them behind, everything they knew. Is there any way that this nation of
rugged individualists, iconoclasts, self-made men, entrepreneurs, and liberated
free-thinkers can ever relate, one to the other? Now that would be an event for
which to light firecrackers.
Until then I will console myself that American relationships are not
impossible in a country that can combine onions, celery, eggs, and gobs of
mayonnaise with subterranean tubers and end up with something as palatable as
potato salad.
apt (adj.): exactly suitable - ingenious (adj.): having or
showing cleverness at making or inventing things - conglomeration (n.): a collection
of many different things gathered together - akin (adj.): having the same
appearance, character, etc.; like - ostensible (adj.): seeming or pretended,
but perhaps not really true - lettuce (n.): a common garden plant
with large tender pale green leaves folded round each other - entrenched
(adj.): firmly established - enslaver (n.): s.o. who makes another person into
a slave - to foster (v.): to help (s.th.) to grow or develop - tape
(n.): narrow material in the form of a band, used for tying up parcels, etc. -
pin (n.): a short thin stiff piece of metal that looks like a small nail, used
for fastening together pieces of cloth, paper, etc. - longevity (n.): great
length of life - testimony (n.): a formal statement that s.th. is true; any
fact or situation that shows or proves s.th. very clearly - adhesive (n.): a
substance that can stick or cause sticking - to flame (v.): to break out
with sudden violence - fabric (n.): framework, base, or system - imprint
(n.): a mark left on or in s.th. - solitary (adj.): alone without companions
- to herald (v.): to announce publicly - stamina (n.): the
strength of body or mind to fight tiredness, discouragement, or illness;
staying power - guts (n. pl.): value, force - rugged (adj.): having a
rough uneven surface; strongly built, sturdy - iconoclast (n.): a person who
attacks widely-held beliefs or customs - entrepreneur (n.).. a person
who makes the plans for a business or a piece of work and gets it going -
firecracker (n.): a small firework that explodes loudly several times and jumps
each time it explodes - celery (n.): a small plant with bunched
greenish-white stems grown as a vegetable - gob (n.): a mass of s.th.
wet and sticky - subterranean (ad).): underground - tuber (n.): a fleshy
swollen underground stem, such as the potato, with small buds from which new
plants grow - palatable (adj.): pleasant to taste
founding fathers: the persons attending
the Federal Constitutional Convention in May 1787, which decided the principles
of the Constitution of the United States - Patrick Henry: (1736-1799),
American revolutionary leader and orator, whose famous call to arms against
Britain ("Give me liberty or give me death"), assured the
mobilization of the Virginia militia and Henry's reputation as one of the most
effective speakers in American history
1. It is on the level of cuisine that the 'melting pot' seems to function without problems. Visit the ethnic restaurants in your town and try to find out why it is possible that the same people who love to eat in pizzerias and Chinese restaurants can demand 'Ausländer raus!'
2 Why does Dr. Wolper reject the notion of the 'melting pot'?
3 What are his reasons for concluding that "this is not a democracy" (I. 20)?
4 Describe the tone of the article.
5 What, according to Leven, is the reason why Americans do not melt?