Yes there was an Amercian Century

Tim Rutten is a “Times Staff Writer” the Times in question being the LA Times, a once excellent paper. Vestiges of its former glory which officially passed when it was bought by the Chicago Tribune group, remain in the form of writers like Tim Rutten, as you will soon see. I intend to write a review of his review of “The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century.”

The US press is full of reports of the book but Rutten’s review is outstanding and much more interesting than the interview with the author in the Washington Post. The Post has made the mistake of opening up the paper to readers far and wide and the result is not edifying.

If this book is as good as Tim says or as good as the review itself it will be a pleasure to read and eventually review but that could be weeks or months off and I don’t see any harm in turning this turtle over. “Life, as Kierkegaard pointed out, “can only be understood retrospectively, but we must live it prospectively,” Rutten reminds as by way of opening his account of Steve Coll’s book.

And soon this:

“In essence, it (the book) proposes not so much an alternate history of the 20th century but an account of one that occurred simultaneous to our usual collective recollection of the last 100 years. While the great struggles of the American Century - world wars, depression, imperialism, the fights with right-and left-wing totalitarianisms - were preoccupying us, out of sight and beyond our Western and essentially secular understanding, men, ideas and appetites born of a desert waste were conjoining in ways that created the first great challenge of this new era, the confrontation with Islamic jihadism.”

A perfect set up for this century. It’s a joy to see a reviewer go about his work with such style. Last night I sat up reading Edna O’Brien’s “Jame’s Joyce” a reminder in the year 2008 (can it really be this late) that people once wrote and read reviews like their life depended on it – which it literally, ah, did. Imagine being Joyce and being forced to play up to lesser lights, mere mortals like George Bernard Shaw, because of his dependence on literary acceptance for, in the end, money.