BHL.

June 3, Santa Rosa.

In the early morning hours I steal a few moments to read.
This would be the perfect time for me to work; if I'm lucky like today the baby naps and Fridman is still asleep, everything is nice and quiet. But I can't work because I need electricity to be able to connect to the internet (I use an ethernet bridge, which plugs in,) and the circus generator is not turned on until much later, usually around 9:30 AM or so. So I indulge - I read.
In the package my Mom sent me there was a book she'd liked. It's called "American Vertigo," by Bernard-Henri Lévy. "BHL," as he is alternatively affectionately and derisively called by his countrymen, is the quintessential French intellectual: a philosopher and writer, he is self-important, sophisticated, artfully arrogant, and of TV stardom status. He is as a matter of fact married to a flamboyant actress, Arielle Dombasle, very American in her bleach blond-skinny-and-extra-wide-smile style, and they are a celebrity couples' dream team. I suppose it does say something for French society that philosophers and writers regularly attain such movie star status, for BHL is by no means the only one.
The book, which the author says was commissioned by The Atlantic magazine, is a road trip through the United States on the heels of that most famous of Frenchmen in this country after Lafayette, Alexis de Tocqueville. It is an easy read and surprisingly interesting. But the devil is in the details.
Lévy devotes two pages, for example, to the theory that the left lane on highways not being intended for faster drivers is a reflection of the equalitarian nature of the US. I guess like a majority of American drivers he let all the "Slower vehicles keep right" signs on the side of the highway go totally unnoticed. Further on he goes on for a whole sub-chapter ("Hillary and the stain") about Hillary Rodham Clinton's run for president being hard on her because she would have to face being into the very office where her husband cheated on her.
All in all more revealing of the French obsession with the sex life of their politicians than they would like to admit, in a country where a president served two seven-year terms with a daughter by one of his mistresses growing up in a posh Paris neighborhood a well-kept secret, and if I'm not mistaken, at the taxpayers' expense (the nature of the French press and its role in that affair, no pun intended - most newsmen knew of the daughter but none came out publicly about it until the president had officially okayed it, after he'd left office.)
In another oops instance, BHL talks about Lackawanna being "50 miles west of Buffalo, NY." You're left to wonder if the guy actually did make the trip or just sent someone to sweat out the traffic, and whether very intellectual editors in France know how to check a map.
I'm only a quarter into the book.
(To be continued.)