We study, as Americans, the extreme aspects of repression under the Stalinist era. We're focused on them. The vast majority of Russian citizens, it was a much softer type of being disconcerted.
I was an American Studies student at Berkeley as an undergraduate, and pretty much as a graduate student, too.
I like to do books in which a lot of the research and the writing and the thinking revolves around something American.
I live my life by the numbers. Not only am I an American, I am an Americanist.
I graduated. I did History of Art, you know, all those things - American Studies - and then I went to art school, and I did Joseph Alvarez in the art school.
Like most lazy upper-middle-class kids, American Studies seemed like a fun way to use your knowledge of TV to get an A.
When I came to America, I was already a writer, already published in Bosnia. I was planning to go back, but I had no choice but to stay here after the civil war, so I enrolled at Northwestern in a master's program and studied American literature.
By the time I received my doctorate in American studies in 1957, I was in the twisted grip of a disease of our times in which the sufferer experiences an overwhelming urge to join the 'real world.' So I started working for newspapers.
