VOLLMANN said that he is “an American first and would never do anything to hurt this country.” — Department of Homeland Security,
report of investigation, 2005
1.
In 1966, John Steinbeck completed a book called America and Americans — an appropriate subject for the writer I have always considered the most American of us all. Ruefully clear-eyed and sometimes furious about our national faults (“From the first we have treated our minorities abominably”), this brave, decent, sentimental man, a sincere thinker but not a deep one, a patriot who loved the idea of freedom — which for him included…
