From a novel I read recently: "Bob was American and called himself a former American, although such a thing would never happen. He had the fist-line friendlines

From a novel I read recently: "Bob was American and called himself a former American, although such a thing would never happen. He had the fist-line friendliness typical of this culture, or lack thereof, and the particular and very irritating sense of specialness that had been infused in several generations of American children. You had to be special indeed if you were to play into the American Dream, the very only thing holding this mass of people together. Be somebody rather than do something. Not that this would not be in the back of the head of any parent anywhere else in the world, but anywhere else there was an unconscious sense of healthy resignation. Being was still a tad more important than becoming. Anywhere else, the condensate of thousands of dead generations, the wisdom of finitude had not been washed down to homeopathic levels by the tidal terror and guilt of having left and lost Mother. A borderline Nation, whose sense of abandonment, emptiness and void identity had brought about destruction, oral compensation and the art of fake relationships. But also a knack for pottering stuff."