“A black bear!” exclaims my friend RL Goldberg as we drive through Vermont. I’m visiting Dartmouth College at the moment and he kindly agreed to show me some interesting local attractions including a toy museum and a canine chapel. Near the Canadian border, the scenery is spectacular, with hills and forests stretching out seemingly endlessly, and against this backdrop it doesn’t seem at all unusual to see a young black bear crossing the road in front of us. Although I’ve never seen a bear in the wild before. But anyway, my European self expects things like that to happen in America. In a country that we imagine to be dopey and over the top because it’s at odds with our supposedly more serious, more sophisticated Old World. At the same time, we cannot help but envy the people here for many of the freedoms that are allowed here.
As a non-American writer, it is a great honor for me to be invited to an Ivy League educational institution, and I accepted without hesitation when asked to give a lecture and attend a seminar that RL teaches. To my outsider, campus life, which feels somehow familiar through American novels, films, and series, seems exuberantly comfortable and easygoing.
2023-08-06 17:23:00
#Katharina #Volckmer #USA #generations
