WITH MANY VOICES: Europe Talks about America

From a year of interviews with the man-in-the-European-street, this novelist creates a word picture of their worlds and our own, as they say it. The ""little people's"" image of America is remarkably consistent--we are friendly, well-meaning, and technological; we are ""Ugly"", innocent, and well-off; we are mechanized, materialistic, overbearing and bellicose; essentially, we are, as they say, ""just like everybody else"". All of which proves that in Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Russia, in France, England and Italy, wherever the author roamed, people are people: prejudices, warm of heart, and unnationally human. In this mass colloquium, more dialogue than travelogue, Europe does talk of America; even more, Europe talks of Europe; and most of all, one notices, the author talks of the modern world in his own subjective human way, with undue emphasis on anti-German feeling, the nation he finds at the root of all evil, nuclear or not, and a slightly annoying polyglot repetition of his own favorite political opinions. Still the many voices provide a long-playing international record echoing the old refrain of Peace, ""but for Politics, we would all be brothers"". Interesting conversational harmony in which an American reader can hear echoes of himself in the universal noise.