On Angela Kiss's 'How to be an Alien in England'

I picked up Kiss's book with some excitement: she is a contemporary female writer, working as an accountant, and a Hungarian, writing about her expat experiences in the UK. I put down the book with a bit annoyed. Altogether, I would give it 2 stars out o 5, if I would give stars. Here is why.

In her book Kiss is into what was a very popular genre from the Romantic age up to the late 1980's: giving a national characterology. She is trying to do it in a funny way, but the book does not give one enough info to discern what Kiss actually finds true and how much of her bafflement concerning British habits is genuine, and how much is adopted for comical effect. Some of the jokes are good, some of the stories are cute, but altogether the material is too thin. Where it isn't too thin it commits one of two other mistakes: 1) It relies too heavily on the same jokes, and 2) it doesn't recognize when being puzzled why another culture stops being funny. The first of these two issues becomes apparent after page 30 where she can only keep the narrative flowing by making more and more ridiculous overstatements, which, naturally, become less and less entertaining, and don't provide any actual insight either into her experiences in Britain as an East-European, nor into what the Brits are like in their daily interactions.
The second issue is very bothersome and irritating on many points of the book: Kiss seems simply to have assumed that her way of doing and understanding things is obviously correct, since it makes sense to her. That's fine so far, but then she assumes that different ways of doing things not only not make sense to her but they can't make sense at all. She doesn't even entertain the idea that there might be different ways of going about one's life and looking at things. Or at least she doesn't show any sign which would indicate that she understands this.

Reading the book reminded of an important difference between comedians. Some of them are really funny to listen to for a few minutes, and they can be downright brilliant in short sketches. Still, if one has to listen to them for more than 5 minutes it becomes apparent that what seemed to be depth or meaning is just obsession with some insignificant detail or a ridiculous overstatement and simplification. Then there are comedians who can do one and a half hour shows, connect a string of topics, comment on publicly debated issues - moral, political, etc. - and one is entertained all the while. Sadly Kiss's book reminded me much more of the first kind of comedian. There are some funny bits and pieces, but reading the book for more than 10 minutes makes its shallowness obvious, and highlights that its author has failed to grasp what being an alien in England is like, as well what Brits are like. These are of course both tall orders, in fact, in my opinion they are impossible, since there is no unified British character, nor is there a single immigrant experience. There are common threads but those would have to be teased out with much more care and sophistication. What's more annoying is that Kiss doesn't even seem to have tried sufficiently. I would only recommend this book to someone who has never been to the UK and never intends to come here, and is a big fan of often very insensitive and politically incorrect 1970's, 1980's humour.

Books, books, books, and a beautiful Sunday

We finally have the first truly glorious weekend in the UK: the temperature is above 20 celsius degrees and the Sun is shining all day long. Accordingly, I went for a good 5,5k run around Summertown in the morning.

I've finally finished The Shepherd's Life yesterday. Excellent book. I have to make a small amendment to my previous post on the book: Rebanks does not argue straight out for a more conservative life and to sticking to old ways. He himself chose to combine his farming life with work done for UNESCO, and he tells several stories about how his grandfather, his father, other shepherds, and he himself had to adopt new methods and approaches to keep farming sustainable and going. Excellent book all in all.

The next two books that I will read will be Sidney Giffard's Japan Among the Powers 1890-1990, and Angela Kiss's How to be an Alien in England. Giffard's book seemed to be a good choice, as I have read now 5-6 basic books on the history, economy, and politics of Japan, as well as 15-20 of the key literary pieces. Giffard used to work in Japan in a political function, and he is a Brit, which makes the book doubly interesting for me.

Kiss's is book is nothing heavy or serious. I've already skimmed through the first few chapters on the bus. It is funny, in an interesting way. It is somewhere between humour that is becoming increasingly frowned upon and American stand up comedy. She does rely on many bad national stereotypes, and makes many jokes based on overgeneralization which are not necessarily lucky. But at some points she seems to be aware of what she is doing and making fun of making fun of people in this way. All in all, a relaxing and witty reading, even if one doesn't actually learn much about how to be an alien in England. Shusaku Endo's book Foreign Studies is probably a more accurate representation of the issues one deal with :)