(Re) Born in the USA by Roger Bennett

 

Bennett, Roger. (Re) Born in the USA

With nationalism in great supply in this Olympic Week, I offer up a wild bob-sled run of red, white, and blue for your delectation. 

Roger Bennett was born into a Jewish immigrant family in Liverpool, England and spent most of his young years trying to survive an English public school (Liverpool College for Gentlemen) where the norm was continual canings by sadistic masters. Oddly, this regimen was offered in tandem with diet of classical languages and literature. Bennett’s main therapy was to attach himself to American pop culture of the 1980’s and by the time you finish the book, you will have visited every pop song, entertainer, and tv show of that era.

As luck would have it, Bennett was able to spend one of his maturational summers in Chicago where he was able to intensify his USA obsession.  He inhaled enormous mountains of junk food, binged on television game shows, monitored MTV twenty four hours a day, and swallowed an enormous quantity of beer.  A love affair with the Chicago Bears culminated in obtaining William (Refrigerator) Perry’s autograph—an item he still treasures to this day.   

For a time after he returns from the states, he joins the cohort of Liverpudlian yobs who thrive on sex, inflicting pain, and pickling themselves with alcohol. This also allows him to evoke the stench and talk of typical locker rooms and pubs as well as his initial dabbles into sex.  If this kind of candor offends you, you are better off to take a pass on the book.  

I kept reading because he does have a flair for the funny and colorful turn of phrase. Take this description of one of his teachers who his classmates had nicknamed Porky.  “Mr. McDuff was an unkempt 320 pound gym teacher who stuffed himself into a red Adidas tracksuit that viewed from behind made him resemble an overcooked bratwurst on the brink of bursting out of its casing.”   

 Bennett’s return to sanity and emigration to his beloved USA only occupies the last few chapters of this saga—I suspect to set the stage for a second volume that will detail his rise to the status of full blown successful citizen with a loving wife and four kids. It's a quick read and an amusing way to while away a few hours getting a better picture of a guy who has appeared often on MSNBC as a soccer commentator.