From the American novelist Anne Tyler (nominated by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby as the greatest novelist writing in English - and I think I agree)'s most recent novel, Digging to America:
Sami, born in America, of Iranian parents rants to his Iranian extended family and friends, all living the in the US, regarding:
The American craze for logic - "Logic's why they're always suing each other. They believe that for every event there has to be a cause. Surely somebody is to blame! they say...They feel personally outraged by bad luck"
American so-called openness - "So instantaneously chummy they are, so 'Hello, I love you,' so "how do you do, let me tell you my marital problems,' and yet, have any of them ever really truly let you into their lives?"
Modern, liberal America is embodied in Bitsy, who adopts a Korean and then a Chinese child, and tries to keep them connected to their 'ethnicity' by dressing them in native costume, whilst agonising about organic food and excoriating Sami's wife, who has also adopted a Korean child, for going out to work two days a week. Bitsy says, towards the end of this wonderful novel, about the Iranian woman's elegant, also Iranian mother-in-law - "what I really have against her is, she's elusive. Oh I hate it that world finds elusiveness so attractive! Elusive people are maddening! Why doesn't anyone realise?"
Read, as they say, the whole thing.
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