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kitsch: something of tawdry design, appearance, or content created to appeal to popular or undiscriminating taste.
Outside our car, the Palmetto Expressway crawled along in its congested 21st century dysfunction; inside our blue Mazda, George Washington galloped around the woods of Pennsylvania and Virginia, fighting the French, the Indians, the British, accumulating victories, lands, honors. According to the Kelleys, everything the man did led to accolades. Even when he lost a battle, he seemed to win things endlessly more valuable: the approval of other men, bear hugs and promotions.
The girl in me found myself thinking: I wouldn't have liked this dude. Between his size, his athletic abilities, his cocky self-confidence, his dancing skills, his charm with the ladies, his guns, his slaves, his rum distillery, his love of fox hunting--he reminded me of the privileged, often soused preppy jocks I met at an American college decades ago. They loudly made all the right noises in class when talking about economics or politics, but privately had trouble taking no for an answer. They acted impulsively and said and took things they shouldn't, respecting only their own kin and kind. There must be some dark details to Washington's story, I thought.
But none of that was mentioned in this narrative. The man could do no wrong. Moreover, repeatedly the narrator recounted moments in which Washington almost died. Bullets barely missed him, various of his horses were shot and buckled under him. Washington invariably survived, and surviving was able to give birth to this country.
"Mom?" Simon said from the backseat, "What would have happened if Washington had died? Maybe there would be no America? Maybe the British would have killed us all, or taxed us to death?"
I could hear anxiety in his voice. The audio book had made an impression. What would have happened to this country without a father? It is the week of Passover and the easy extinction of a whole people has been a daily topic. The Jews would have disappeared from the face of the earth if the Egyptians had killed all the newborn sons of the Jews. Similarly, if you kill the father of a nation... I could see the wheels of Simon's mind spinning.
"Don't you think," I asked tentatively, "that someone else would have been chosen to lead the militia in the Revolutionary War? Someone who would have done as a good job?"
"But that person would not have been so good, Mom. That person would not be Washington. Maybe that guy would have lost the battle of Yorktown."
"Could be. But how about this? Maybe that person would have been even better. Maybe that person would had a way of getting supplies to Valley Forge sooner. Remember all those soldiers with no food or clothes in winter? Maybe that guy wouldn't have lost New York."
"Yes," Simon said, and then he added after a long pause, "but we're so lucky Washington didn't die, right?"
"Yes, Sweetie. We're lucky."
* * *
I've wondered for weeks what all this reading about America would do for me? Would it change me in some fundamental way? Would I feel more at home here? Would my feelings about the country deepen?
After the Washington episode in the car, I found myself irritated to no end. Irritated by the Kelleys and their cheesy tale of George Washington which we had to play all the way through because Simon insisted. I was irritated by Simon, by his delight in the story and the figure of Washington, by the ease with which he welcomed this sentimental, one-dimensional version. I know--Simon is eleven. He's into historical heroes; I know that, too. I didn't say a thing. But I noted my irritation. Such sentimental drivel.
* * *
Patriotism comes hard to first generation immigrants, or so it seems to me. I am grateful to be here: the man I love and my son are here; I pay taxes and will bear arms to defend this country should it be attacked directly; I give back in many ways. But the deep passion for all things American that my son feels is foreign to me.
I've lived in other places. I know in the flesh how cheaply governments can hold the lives of its people; after Vietnam and the 5,000 already dead from the latest fiasco, this government, like so many, seems deeply flawed. Moreover, I'm full of far away places, stories, people, languages, landscapes, whole cities, a thriving parallel universe now mostly lost, but which once was all I knew, and as such will always be a source of longing. Packed tight within me is what I hold dear, what makes me different: soft boiled eggs for breakfast and grainy bread, a dozen much loved books, fresh cut flowers, meals my mother made. And I'm full of things I cannot abide. If I would have to find just one word for those things, it would be a word in German that has entered all Western languages: kitsch.
Above is an elegant dictionary definition of kitsch; however, a famous one was given by Milan Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. He was talking of kitsch as an effect of totalitarian regimes. Kitsch was all the ways in which authoritarian regimes gloss over and re-imagine the unacceptable realities of their policies. Here, at the risk of offending some of you, is Kundera's definition:
...kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.
Patriotism in all its celebratory and florid rhetorical expressions always smells of kitsch to me. I distrust it. Like that audio book of Washington, it glosses over complexity, and purges details that are unacceptable. At times patriotism can lead to great deeds--but not always.
* * *
Having probably offended you all, I should confess that some things have changed these last few months. I knew so little when Simon and I began reading. Now all these figures and events fill much of our day. And slowly many characters have taken residence in my mind, keeping me company, becoming friends of sorts. I find myself making lists of the books I will read when this is over--about Lincoln and that war, and Jefferson, and Dolly Madison, and that big book on Jackson that came out a few years ago, American Lion, and the journals of Lewis and Clark. And Washington. I must read more about Washington. And I want to do a road trip with Simon. I want to see the South West and Pittsburgh and the Erie Canal and the Colorado River.
* * *
For now, Simon has requested that we get a hold of Part II and Part III of the George Washington audio book biography. I will bite my tongue. I promised him I'll do my best.
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