Pour en finir avec BHL.

June 24, Antioch.

Or the devil is not only in the details, but in the big picture, too.
The details: "the deeply, totally criminal nature of this country," in an epilogue actually defending the United States against the accusations of anti-Americanists, as they're called in Europe. For this is the irony of this book, how it would sound pro-American in Europe in general and in France in particular. How it defends the ideas of the neo-conservative wing of the right with surprising vigor, and hence the politics of the Bush administration, where neo-conservatives, such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, have had great influence, as everybody knows (their most notable contribution the war in Iraq.)
The details. The "desert" along Route One in California between Carmel-by-the-Sea and Santa Barbara: : "Highway 101(...) Heat and speed. Desert." Later: "An entire décor reminiscent not of the beginning but of the end of the world (...) that inhuman desert that threw itself into the ocean." California does have deserts all right, but I'm not sure they're along Route One, exactly.
The big picture: the recurring gimmick of starting with a list of counter-affirmations, a litany of repetitions affecting to be a style, to finally hammer in the proposed theory, and always, this temptation of drawing sweeping philosophical judgments from an isolated fact or conversation or event.
A style that turns unreadable when it tries to wax philosophy, admittedly a recurring problem with French intellectuals far more serious than this one (Derrida, anyone?) Lévy exemplifies the sorry state of French intellectuals today - so-called philosophers masking the emptiness with complicated, unreadable prose, offer a gaping lack of substance on a bed of convoluted mannerisms, the narcissism of writers endlessly "watching their navel," as the French say, or the obscene parading as literature.
And yet I ran through the book, enjoying the ride (with driver) more than I like to admit (the French in me,) learning a thing or two in the midst of the platitudes and rehashed information it presents as if they were fresh. The history behind Mount Rushmore, some interesting tidbits about famous prisons like Rikers in New York or Angola in Louisiana (and I think Lévy's analysis on the prison system of the U.S. is actually relevant, even though prone as always to the too-broad conclusion.)
My Mom liked the book but my Mom always falls for a glamourous man, even in writing. I'm glad she sent it along.