Visiting Lecturer
To feel strongly about the United States, to realise that Americans are misunderstood here, and to set out to put them and their country in a better perspective is a worthy object; and Mr. Magee's obvious enthusiasm, coupled as it is with quite a shrewd critical faculty, carries him some way towards writing a valuable book. True, he goes over old ground, but this would not matter if he looked at it with a fresh eye. Unfortunately, he is an incurable lecturer. He cannot write as if standing aside, leaving us to draw our own conclusions : he must tell us what he thinks (or we ought to think) about everything. Such a tech- nique is suitable for an article on how to get round the US on a tourist allowance; it becomes wearisome in a book. And he has surprisingly little idea of what is, and what is not interesting. Endless trivia—the names of people he meets, the weather, the view from the window—jostle an interview with Stevenson or a visit to Las Vegas. Presumably, Mr. Magee feels that they will give the reader a sense of intimacy; and if he were an evocative rather than a forensic writer, they might. As it is, they merely encourage the uneasy feeling that the author is far too pre- occupied with his own affairs and thought- processes (at times he writes almost as if he were describing his conversion—perhaps he is).
BRIAN INGLIS
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