Author Bio
All my life I have encountered people's assumptions about who and what I am — assumptions that were based on my appearance and actions; assumptions that were wrong. I was born in France, but my mother was American. My father's Jewish; my mother was not. English is my native language, but I briefly spoke French first. I'm a graduate of an Ivy League college, but also of a chaotic and untraditional high school run by hippies and idealists. That school was in California, where you might think I grew up, judging by the way I speak; but I've spent most of my life in New York City.
So, early in life, I got to know the surprised looks of people who were thinking, what are you doing here? And why aren't you more like us? I learned to cope with the uncomprehending gaze of someone who thinks, well, of course, everyone everywhere must do things the way I learned to do them here. (I don't just mean California kids who couldn't fathom that a family might not own a single car; I also mean respected thinkers who can't imagine that their thoughts on human nature, based on life in one social class, and one nation, might not apply to the whole human race.)
US AND THEM is a book about research and ideas. But I suppose its emotional roots are in my struggles to cope with people who think their way of dividing up humanity must be the only one around.
Most people spend a lot of time every day thinking about where and how they "fit in"' - and about who doesn't belong. It might involve wondering why people in Northern Ireland or Somalia, who look and sound so much alike, are killing each other in endless wars. It might involve the feeling that you're not pulling your weight at work, and you've got to work harder to be worthy of your membership on the team. It might be a feeling of guilt about just not liking the way the neighbors act — with their different foods, holidays and styles of dress.
Since this experience is so much a part of daily life, there are a great many interesting books about one aspect or another of the "Us-Them" mindset. I've limited myself here to a few that meant a lot to me. Novelists are especially sensitive to this play of belonging and not belonging. In a sense, it's their subject: People making (or finding) their place in the human world. Here are some I've loved.
(a) Divided Kingdom, by Rupert Thomson.
This new novel plays with our supposedly separate notions of politics, ethnicity and personality type. The book is set in a Britain organized according to the four "humors" of medieval psychology: You live and work among your fellow phlegmatics, cholerics, sanguines or melancholics.
(b) Kim, by Rudyard Kipling.
A young boy negotiates the teeming landscape of identities that is colonial India. "Who is Kim?" he asks. He finds out by trying on different identities, allegiances and loyalties. As do we all.
(c) The Brief and Terrible Reign of Phil, by George Saunders.
Saunders is highly attuned to the way we use language to mark someone as "one of Us" or "one of Them." He's also funny and deeply serious at once. I admire how he uses the most banal and impoverished language around (the corporate-speak of getting-ahead manuals and company retreats) and makes it sing of true and important matters. This fable is his latest.
(d) The Fortress of Solitude. By Jonathan Lethem.
One of the best American novels about race — and about class, and high-school tribes, and what it means to identify with a great city.
Visit Us and Them: The Blog