Anthropological Provocateur

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE (246 pp.)--Geoffrey Gorer -- Norton ($3).

Geoffrey Gorer is a British anthropologist who writes of the American people with the poker-faced detachment of an anthropologist studying the tribal dances and customs of an Indian tribe. Most Americans, reading his book, will probably feel that they have been made fun of, mocked and double-crossed, for having let an outlander into the midst of their tribal rites.

Everything is grist for his mill: comic strips, eating habits, dates, company picnics, pet names, bull sessions, charity drives, the State Department, foreigners, middle-aged women, vitamins, public opinion polls, antiSemitism, poker games, investment capital, psychoanalysis, the Senate and the Statue of Liberty. Much of the book is funny, some of it is brilliant; all of it would be improved if the author had left out the high-toned language and one-way-glass point of view of anthropology.

Loneliness Is Suspect. Author Gorer's central theme is that Americans are haunted by a dread of loneliness and isolation: "The absence of doors in all but the most private parts of most houses, the wedged-open doors of offices and studies, the shared bedrooms in colleges and boarding houses, the innumerable clubs and fraternal and patriotic associations, professional organizations, and conventions, the club cars on trains, the numberless opportunities and facilities given for casual conversation, the radio piped into every hotel bedroom, into many railway cars and automobiles, left on incessantly in the house.... Americans, psychiatrists as well as laymen, consider that there is something odd, something suspect, in a young person who deliberately eschews company and chooses privacy or loneliness"

Americans, according to Gorer, are psychologically unable to endure the open dislike of the people around them. One example he gives is the difficulty experienced in carrying out a tough policy in conquered Germany. In such situations Americans tend to withdraw, physically if possible; if that is not possible, then chemically, through alcohol, or ideologically, into isolation.

"Coupled with this desire to be loved is a strong fear of rejection, of being treated as unworthy of love; and one technique of dealing with this fear is to anticipate it, by rejecting before one is rejected." The other side of the fear of being rejected is "the fear of being exploited, of being made a sucker of, of not being truly loved for oneself alone but only for what one provides." This, says Author Gorer, is the meanest and one of the most prevalent of American fears. The generosity of Americans, great and ungrudging as it is, is likewise limited by the suspicion that they may be exploited.

Author Gorer's chapters range through opinions on children ("the concept of being a sissy is a key concept for the understanding of American character"); jobs ("the typical patterns of the relationship between American employers and employees can be viewed as stemming from a shared abhorrence of the idea of one man being in overt authority over an equal"); plumbing ("the symbolic and patriotic value of these adjuncts to sanitary and comfortable living has become so great that Americans in foreign countries tend to esteem these alien societies in direct proportion to the number and availability of these amenities. . .").

Parrying the Line. His most vivid chapter is on the perils of dating. It sounds like one of those strange Indian rites in which warriors are permitted to wear feathers only after they have gotten a certain number of wounds. "What distinguishes the 'date' from other conversation is a mixture of persiflage, flattery, wit and love-making which was formerly called a 'line' but which each generation dubs with a new name. The 'line' is an individual variation of a commonly accepted pattern which is considered to be representative of a facet of a man's personality. . . . The girl's skill consists in parrying the 'line' without discouraging her partner or becoming emotionally involved herself. To the extent that she falls for the 'line' she is a loser in this intricate game; but if she discourages her partner so much that he does not request a subsequent 'date' in the near future she is equally a loser. To remain the winner, she must make the nicest discriminations between yielding and rigidity. . . .

"It must be repeated that the goal of 'dating' is not in the first place sexual satisfaction. An 'easy lay' is not a good 'date,' and conversely. . . ." For many girls, says Gorer, the "dating" period is one of humiliation, of frustration, of failure. But such unsuccessful girls are often married earlier and better than the "belles" who find it difficult to give up such triumphs.

Courteous & Clinical. Anthropologist Gorer has spent seven years in the U.S. with British wartime missions and on the staffs of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Yale Institute of Human Relations. In comparison with the old tobacco-spitting attacks of the great English travelers --Dickens, Trollope, Captain Basil Hall --The American People is refined and respectful. Yet its cool and clinical air reveals at times an underlying dislike which may be more destructive than the old quarrel between eagle-screaming Americans, whooping that they could lick the world, and haughty British remittance men sneering at them for spitting on the floors of saloons and riverboat cabins.

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