Improvised Europeans

Taking his title from a letter by Henry Adams, and his subtitle in part from a short story by Henry James, Zwerdling (Orwell and the Left; Virginia Woolf and the Real World) examines the expatriate experience of four American writers: Adams, James, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. Tracing these writers' conflicted attitudes toward their own country, Zwerdling examines how, while forging their individual careers abroad, they altered America's literary landscape. All four shared a moral high-mindedness, familial pride and a rage for order that made them temperamentally unsuited to the chaotic experiment of American democracy. Common scorn of native provincialism, alarm at the influx of non-English-speaking immigrants, loathing of the new plutocracy and (except for James) blatant anti-Semitism were matched with a corresponding conviction (except for Pound) of "Anglo-Saxon" cultural superiority. Expatriation may have offered "a way of achieving abroad what no longer seems possible at home," but as Zwerdling observed of James, "being a citizen of the world might only be a glamorous name for homelessness." A foreign capital like London offered immense opportunities and fed the peculiarly "American capacity to remake oneself," but long absences from home tended to mean that expatriates didn't keep up with the American evolution. Zwerdling offers many nuanced and thought-provoking insights without ever lapsing into theoretical jargon. This is a masterful synthesis of biography with literary, social and political history, an eloquent and compelling account of the creative freedom that expatriation allows and the high price it exacts.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The ambivalence of pen-toting expatriates is Zwerdlings absorbing subject. And those expats are well known indeed: the Americans Henry Adams, Henry James, Erza Pound, and T.S. Eliot, all of whom found themselves while living in London. Zwerdling (Literature/Univ. of Calif., Berkeley; Virginia Woolf and the Real World, 1986) examines a transitional moment in writing lives spent abroad for their revelations of character. The strength of the authors narrative lies in his recognition of bad luck, frustration, and failure as important themes, especially when apparent disappointments help win the writer-protagonist what he most seems to want. Namely, for James the claim to a European, supranational identity, which, Zwerdling points out, offends every natural constituency. James achieved the coveted identity, but was then lamentably misunderstood both by Americans and by his adoptive English audience. The consequences? His bitter withdrawal to the coterie. In fact, despite their triumphs, all four expatriate writers have left troubled legacies, and this is another strong suit of Zwerdlings: his ability to observe without melodrama the conflicts that were innate in each authors ideal of victory abroad. The portrait of Eliot is particularly shrewd. Regardless of his enormous success in England as a writer, editor, critic, and arbiter, despite Eliots estrangement from America and eagerness to leave, he finds no adequate substitute in the improvised life he constructs abroad. That is, he remains unhappily Americanand half erased by his own hand. Although Zwerdlings introductory chapters discussing broader cultural Anglo-American competition and attempted reconciliation are too discursive and extended to launch the book with the brio that it needs, his clarity and concision elsewhere give readers the guidance they require in following sometimes wayward footsteps. Being a citizen of the world might only be a glamourous name for homelessness. Agreed. (8 pages photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.