Across the Pond: An Englishman's View of America by Terry Eagleton

Short, amusing, and occasionally laugh-aloud funny, literary critic Terry Eagleton observes Americans from the right-side of the Atlantic. Except, perhaps Great Britain is not the right side, after all: Eagleton’s arrows sling both ways, and are less of an attack than family banter.

Over seven chapters, Eagleton considers the differences between American and British language, culture, politics, manners, national psyche, sense of identity, attitude to religion, and history.

“The American tourist’s spirit of adventure seems unquenchable. Americans seem to have mental and physical resources quite beyond … Europeans. They will drive for days on end, for example, whereas the British need to stop every ten miles to picnic, throw up, exercise the dog or stroll aimlessly around.” (69)

“The British rather enjoy feeling helpless, as the Americans do not. The thought that there is absolutely nothing one can do is regarded by some in the United States as defeatist, nihilistic and in some obscure sense unpatriotic. In Britain, it brings with it a strange, luminous, semi-mystical kind of peace.” (130)

I wonder, however, who this book is for. It’s not funny enough for Bill Bryson readers, nor academic enough to be a satisying cultural examination. Ultimately, as a British island in an American family, I was entertained but not sated. Across the Pond is a light-hearted, useful aperitif for Americans moving to the UK, or Brits going stateside.

“The natural American tendency is to say yes to things, whereas the natural British tendency is to be cautious.” (67)