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PARTISAN REVIEW
Harold Brodkey:
American movie culture? American high culture as
well?
Dominique Schnapper:
French popular culture is American .
Harold Brodkey:
And this translates into professionalism? A sense of
personal liberty? A different sense of values? What is it besides the
fact that American popular culture is now dominant throughout the
world? Is the pro-Americanism a feeling, without genuine cultural
basis?
Dominique Schnapper:
It
depends whom you are talking about. The
top intelligentsia always have come to America . To have a career as
an intellectual you have to have been through the most important
American universities-Princeton , Yale, and Harvard now are part
of the
rite de passage.
The Communist Party used to be one; the Ivy
League universities are the new one. That's part of the life of the top
intelligentsia .
Harold Brodkey:
But do they admire these colleges, or do they just ad–
mire John Wayne?
Dominique Schnapper:
They admire the way you can work there , com–
pared to the way you work in France . Franr;:ois Furet spent three
months in Chicago and said that he found a new joy in teaching
because the conditions and the students are so good . I don't want to
invite you to the French universities because of this , but you would
understand immediately what it means for a French academic to
be
in an American university for a few months.
Harold Brodkey:
Are the students characterized as being intellectually
more searching, as having fresher minds, as having a profounder
sense of possibility or culture?
Dominique Schnapper:
That I couldn't answer.
Diana Trilling:
Do the French intelligentsia have a sense of the role
played in American culture by the new Yuppie culture?
Dominique Schnapper:
No, they know little about them.
Diana Trilling:
Haven't they heard about them?
Dominique Schnapper:
I don't think they feel it's very important.
Diana Trilling:
Surely they're mistaken in that.
Dominique Schnapper:
They may be mistaken; I don't say they're right.
Diana Trilling:
The other question I wanted to ask: is there a French
analogue for neoconservatism in America?
Dominique Schnapper:
There are a few writers who try to be the
equivalent. But there is nothing like this kind of tradition in French
life. What we call moderate right, in France, is now something close
to your "liberals."
