April 19: Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania In this "state of independence" the observer of American politics meets his linguistic no-man’s land, for there are not words in the French language quiet equal to the American paranoid's habits of this clinging (as to bowling balls, to Big Macs, to all that is compulsively American). That is to say, here in Pennsylvania coal country, I have been un homme qui perdit, and, so duly de-centered, I entered a local bistro named “Max's Big Bang & Brews” to find out whether, in fact, I might get a Greyhound bus back to civilisation-propre, and also, alas to uncover (that is to say, metaphorically, for one always uncovers that which is exposed, uncovering becoming a coming-into-consciousness not a transforming-of-the already-is) whether the local proletariat were in fact se cramponnant aux fusils et à la religion ...alas, the locals continuously changed the subject from Hillary’s Iraq policy to my opinions of Hitler, which is to say, Billy, the beer bellied videur de Max’s Big Bang & Brews, told me, in no uncertain terms, that to him the French were, as he put it (though their odd pronunciation eluded me) “a bunch of palsies,” or perhaps it was “a batch of panzeees,” and as I do not know this expression “panzeees,” Monsieur Billy explained by pointing to his boot and then stomping the sawdust floor, repeatedly, declaring, “Dat dere, under my boot, my French Friend, is exa-ct-ly wh-e-re you Frenchies would be against the krawts, if my fahhhther and this guy’s fahhhther hadnt saved your foie gras asses on D-Day,” he then proceeded to shove me violently out of the bistro and onto the cement promenade.... Thus my explication de texte pennyslvanienne, as it were, was brutally cut short, bruised, guttered, evicted, exiled, and finally, rendered as indeterminate as another Zogby poll. As I stood on my own two feet, dusting myself off, I spied an Obama poster onto which someone had drawn a holstered gun....a peculiar signifié (black man armed with gun in small white town: that showdown that America most fears) which convinced me all the more, that I would do well to get back to the gun-free Sorbonne as soon as this American primary (that is to say, this endless myth of beginning) is over.*
April 19: Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania In this "state of independence" the observer of American politics meets his linguistic no-man’s land, for there are not words in the French language quiet equal to the American paranoid's habits of this clinging (as to bowling balls, to Big Macs, to all that is compulsively American). That is to say, here in Pennsylvania coal country, I have been un homme qui perdit, and, so duly de-centered, I entered a local bistro named “Max's Big Bang & Brews” to find out whether, in fact, I might get a Greyhound bus back to civilisation-propre, and also, alas to uncover (that is to say, metaphorically, for one always uncovers that which is exposed, uncovering becoming a coming-into-consciousness not a transforming-of-the already-is) whether the local proletariat were in fact se cramponnant aux fusils et à la religion ...alas, the locals continuously changed the subject from Hillary’s Iraq policy to my opinions of Hitler, which is to say, Billy, the beer bellied videur de Max’s Big Bang & Brews, told me, in no uncertain terms, that to him the French were, as he put it (though their odd pronunciation eluded me) “a bunch of palsies,” or perhaps it was “a batch of panzeees,” and as I do not know this expression “panzeees,” Monsieur Billy explained by pointing to his boot and then stomping the sawdust floor, repeatedly, declaring, “Dat dere, under my boot, my French Friend, is exa-ct-ly wh-e-re you Frenchies would be against the krawts, if my fahhhther and this guy’s fahhhther hadnt saved your foie gras asses on D-Day,” he then proceeded to shove me violently out of the bistro and onto the cement promenade.... Thus my explication de texte pennyslvanienne, as it were, was brutally cut short, bruised, guttered, evicted, exiled, and finally, rendered as indeterminate as another Zogby poll. As I stood on my own two feet, dusting myself off, I spied an Obama poster onto which someone had drawn a holstered gun....a peculiar signifié (black man armed with gun in small white town: that showdown that America most fears) which convinced me all the more, that I would do well to get back to the gun-free Sorbonne as soon as this American primary (that is to say, this endless myth of beginning) is over.*
