BOOKS
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lose with the years." This is true, and is true even of men; but then this
book is true. In older times, the times in which she formed herself, it
might well have been described as "life-enhancing."
FRANK KERMODE
The Loathing of America
ANTI-AMERICANISM: CRITIQUES AT HOME AND ABROAD,
1965-1990. By Paul Hollander. Oxford University Press. $35.00.
Some people do not like the Japanese, others do not get along with the
French, still others stay clear of children. These are simple antipathies of
little consequence. But there are aversions that assume the form of pho–
bias - fears and hostilities that come to dominate one's life because they
seem to explain its misfortunes and frustrations. When such phobias strike
large numbers the results are dangerous mass movements, ready-made
material for demagogues. The most prevalent of these is anti-Semitism;
skin color and class- and gender-based resentments also belong in this
category. To Paul Hollander, a professor at the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst, belongs the honor of having discovered yet
another public phobia, anti-Americanism. As he depicts it, it is a common
disorder whose victims, however, are to be found almost exclusively
among the educated and affiuent.
Professor Hollander is a Hungarian who, having emigrated to the
United States after 1956, became increasingly puzzled by the prevalence
among Western intellectuals of admiration for despotic Communist
Russia and antipathy for democratic America. On the former subject he
wrote
Political Pilgrims,
published in 1981; the latter forms the subject of
his new book. The two works complement each other and are a
significant contribution to the understanding of the mentality of
twentieth-century intelligentsia, a social group that, despite its immense
influence on public opinion, has not been adequately studied.
Anti-Americanism
is a long book, replete with examples of anti–
American sentiment in the churches, at the universities, and in the mass
media in the United States, Europe, Mexico, and Canada.
It
is not with–
out flaws . Some of these have been pointed out by reviewers, even those
