Product Description

Here is the ultimate American road book, one with a perspective unlike that of any other. In January 1947 Simone de Beauvoir landed at La Guardia airport and began a four-month journey that took her from one coast of the United States to the other, and back again. Embraced by the Condé Nast set in a swirl of cocktail parties in New York, where she was hailed as the "prettiest existentialist" by Janet Flanner in The New Yorker, de Beauvoir traveled west by car, train, and Greyhound, immersing herself in the nation's culture, customs, people, and landscape. The detailed diary she kept of her trip became America Day by Day, published in France in 1948 and offered here in a completely new translation. It is one of the most intimate, warm, and compulsively readable texts from the great writer's pen.
Fascinating passages are devoted to Hollywood, the Grand Canyon, New Orleans, Las Vegas, and San Antonio. We see de Beauvoir gambling in a Reno casino, smoking her first marijuana cigarette in the Plaza Hotel, donning raingear to view Niagara Falls, lecturing at Vassar College, and learning firsthand about the Chicago underworld of morphine addicts and petty thieves with her lover Nelson Algren as her guide. This fresh, faithful translation superbly captures the essence of Simone de Beauvoir's distinctive voice. It demonstrates once again why she is one of the most profound, original, and influential writers and thinkers of the twentieth century.
On New York:"I walk between the steep cliffs at the bottom of a canyon where no sun penetrates: it's permeated by a salt smell. Human history is not inscribed on these carefully calibrated buildings: They are closer to prehistoric caves than to the houses of Paris or Rome."
On Los Angeles:"I watch the Mexican dances and eat chili con carne, which takes the roof off my mouth, I drink the tequila and I'm utterly dazed with pleasure."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #643530 in Books
• Published on: 2000-03-30
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 408 pages

From Publishers Weekly
It has been a good year for the French existentialist and feminist, with the recent publication of de Beauvoir's love letters to Nelson Algren and now this account, published in the U.S. for the first time, of her four-month tour in 1947. De Beauvoir can be facile and condescending, as when she compares the "strained coldness of white American women" to "lively" black women, or writes: "And when you see these men dance, their sensual life unrestrained by an armor of Puritan virtue, you understand how much sexual jealousy can enter into the white Americans' hatred of these quick bodies." Often, however, de Beauvoir is more clever and subtle: "I sense that America is hard on intellectuals. Publishers and editors size up your mind in a critical and distasteful way, like an impresario asking a dancer to show her legs," she writes, and elsewhere, "Los Angeles is vast but porous. [Chicago] is made of a thick dough, without leavening." De Beauvoir's itinerary, set by lecture dates, is a bizarre combination of the banal (hotels, drugstores), tourist traps (Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas) and the dark underbelly of slaughterhouses, drug addicts and Bowery bums. But she inevitably returns to the same themes: black/white relations, political commitment and comparison of the U.S. and France. While she mentions Algren by initials, de Beauvoir gives no inkling of her passionate interest in him, attesting to her ability to compartmentalize romantic and intellectual pursuits. There is a natural cerebral quality to this book that prevents it from becoming ponderous. It will easily attract those interested in de Beauvoir, travel writing and the intersection of American intellectual and popular culture in the postwar years. First serial to Conde Nast Traveler. (Jan.) FYI: The New Press has published de Beauvoir's letters to Algren as A Transatlantic Love Affair (Forecasts, Sept. 7).
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Simone de Beauvoir (1908-86) spent four months in the United States in 1947. Traveling by car, train, and bus, she lectured from coast to coast at the most prestigious colleges and universities, immersing herself in the wonders and woes of American culture. This is the first American edition of her journal, published as L'Amerique au Jour le Jour in France in 1948 and translated and published in England in 1952. Writing from notes, letters, and memories, de Beauvoir details with vivid insight aspects of American life and culture including the New York Bowery, slaughterhouses and burlesques in Chicago, African American church services, racism, politics, films, jazz, Muzak, marijuana, and cocktail parties. She provides sharp sociological perspective on American women, adolescents, college students, public and private higher education, and the inertia of the late 1940s. Impressive, compelling, thought-provoking, and highly recommended.?Jeris Cassel, Rutgers Univ. Libs., New Brunswick, NJ
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

New York Times Book Review
"For women, and men, who want to experience vicariously Jack Kerouac's open road with less macho romanticism and more existential savvy, America Day by Day, hidden from us for nearly 50 years, comes to the reader like a dusty bottle of vintage French cognac, asking only to be uncorked."

Customer Reviews

genius
One of the most accessible books by this great author. It has been a gateway to her other works including the Mandarins. Plus it is a joyous and interesting journey through an America rarely heard about. I realize now that so few Americans were really travelling in the fourties, we had wrapped up the war and wanted to stay home. Excellent book.

Beauvoir's Bon Voyage to America
In Simone de Beauvoir's, America Day by Day, she travels through America in the late 1940's, post WWII. She documents her observations and experiences as she takes a cross-country journey, stopping in popular U.S. locations such as New York, Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Hollywood, and San Francisco.
Beauvoir's travels help her to understand the diversity that embodies America. America is considered `the land of opportunity,' a country where the inhabitants are granted certain freedoms. Thus, Beauvoir whole-heartedly embraces her first experience as an American. Intrigued by the American lifestyle, she wanders, looking for her next new experience, her next new adventure. The former Catholic school girl experiences a spectrum of American culture; she dabbles into alcohol and drugs but also incorporates touring museums and lecturing at various, distinguished women's colleges into her travels. Beauvoir almost seems reckless in how she behaves in a country completely foreign to her, but the way in which she free-spiritedly follows her instincts is very much admirable. She is very wide-eyed and excited about America, but she also expresses her irritation as she passionately acknowledges her opinions on topics like racism and segregation, education, American women, democracy, and communism. "Hardly a day has passed that I haven't been dazzled by America; hardly a day that I haven't been disappointed. I don't know if I could be happy living here; I am sure I'll miss it passionately" (382).

A Portrait of America
Simone de Beauvoir writes America Day by Day as a daily journal, although she actually wrote it after her return to France. Her casual tone allows the reader to travel along with her journey across America. Beauvoir seems enthusiastic about America and does not focus on stereotypes, despite coming with some preconceived notions from movies and friends. Beauvoir also talks about the variety of people in America, which anti-American authors often overlook. The book portrays America well, while highlighting some social problems of the early 1950's, some of which no longer exist. Through her travels she speaks of the rising problems of the fear of communism, the semi-equality of women, and the segregation of Blacks. Other main themes she contemplates through her experiences are religion and democracy. Beauvoir also mentions her views on the American university system and on American intellectualism in general. Despite her relatively negative themes, Beauvoir's admiration for American friendliness and trust shows through. Her love for America is clearly seen. On the last page she describes her arrival in France and how dull it seems compared to America; she says, "Over there in the night, a vast continent is sparkling" (390). America Day by Day is a beautifully written and interesting book.