America's unlikely defender

Jan. 23, 2006 | In the United States, Bernard-Henri Lévy is best known for his book "Who Killed Daniel Pearl," investigating the 2002 murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter on assignment in Pakistan. In France, however, BHL (as he is called) is known more for himself: a flamboyant, courageous, infuriating, charismatic and highly unpredictable writer, who in his checkered career has also played the role of philosopher, filmmaker, diplomatic envoy, war reporter and political activist. He is a celebrity intellectual, a driven enemy of orthodoxy who is regularly compared to Camus and Malraux.

Besides his book on Daniel Pearl, Lévy has also written an in-depth study of Sartre, and a book on Africa's forgotten wars, ambitiously titled "War, Evil, and the End of History." His untranslated works number 30, and he has written countless articles, columns and essays. He is among the most recognized and outspoken public figures in France, appearing regularly as a commentator on French television programs, and clashing frequently with other public figures, as when he traded blows in the fall of 2003 with the Muslim intellectual Tariq Ramadan, who had accused Lévy (along with a handful of other French Jewish intellectuals) of "communitarian politics" and a pro-Israel bias, a charge that Lévy characterized as "anti-Semitic."

But Lévy is by no means just another pundit. He is a deep believer in action, and has visited war zones all over the world in the course of reporting, often at the behest of his government. In 1983 he helped found one of Frances premier anti-racism organizations, SOS Racisme, and he continues to speak out on racial issues in France and abroad. His iconoclasm reaches back to the early '70s, when he led a movement of intellectuals in denouncing Marxism, the dominant ideology in France at the time.

"I am a writer," Lévy says, and by this one is meant to understand that he is beholden to no one. It is perhaps not surprising, then, how much ire Lévy provokes in his own country, along with the adulation. He has been called a provocateur, an intellectual impostor, an egoist and a self-promoter, but what seems to elicit the fiercest reaction is his vehement anti-anti-Americanism. At a time when anti-Americanism is highly fashionable in Europe, Lévy, while no fan of George W. Bush, has consistently bucked the trend. "Anti-Americanism is a horror," he was quoted as saying in the L.A. Times last year. "It is a magnet of the worst. In the entire world, and in France in particular, everything that is the worst in people's heads comes together around anti-Americanism: racism, nationalism, chauvinism, anti-Semitism."

Lévy's interest in America falls squarely within the tradition of Alexis de Tocqueville, who toured the country in the early 1830s, reporting his findings in the classic "Democracy in America." Given this, it seems natural that he undertook to update Tocquevilles observations with a series of new reports on America. The result, a series of essays on everything from Mount Rushmore to a San Francisco sex club, ran in the Atlantic in 2005, and has now been compiled into a book, "American Vertigo."

Salon met with Lévy in the plush dining room of the Carlyle Hotel, on New Yorks Upper East Side. In appearance Lévy bears a remarkable resemblance to Robert DeNiro -- the same small, canny eyes, thin lips and sharp nose -- but, being French, the style of his swagger is roughly diametrical to that which one associates with the actor. He wore a dark jacket (required attire) and, somewhat unnervingly, a white shirt open to the fifth button, exposing his bare chest. Lunch began with split pea soup, fettuccine with white truffles (no garlic, please), and a Diet Coke.

Where did the idea for this project come from?

It was actually not my idea. It was the Atlantics. And, to be honest, I said no at first. It seemed too big for me, too difficult. How could I pretend, first of all, that I could get a grasp on a country as huge as this, even if I took a whole year? Second, as I said to Cullen Murphy, the editor of the Atlantic at the time, of course I like going into the field, but generally I prefer the battlefield. Ive done a book on forgotten African wars, another on Daniel Pearl. America, I said, this is not my thing. I like to smell the perfume of war -- how do you say?

Gunpowder.

Well, tragedy, anyway. But Cullen Murphy said, America is a battlefield, too, you know, so you should feel comfortable. What made me accept in the end was the feeling that right now this country is in the middle of an identity crisis. So, I stopped everything. For one year I didnt do anything else. I devoted myself completely to this.

The journey across America is something that most U.S. citizens make at some point, either when theyre young and footloose or when theyre old and behind the wheel of an R.V. Its like a rite of passage. And you went through that rite of passage. Do you feel changed in any way?

Maybe a little more American. I was very fond of this country before, and I am even more so now. The experience of traveling across this country gives you a new relationship to space, time, territory, and to yourself. It gave me a different sense of what it means to have roots, and to be uprooted. It changes the way you think about things on a fundamental level. Its the only experience of this sort I know, and Ive traveled a lot. Ive crossed Africa, Ive crossed Asia, and many countries in Europe, but crossing America is like nothing I know. Its a metaphysical experience.

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