But far from pretentious or navel-gazing, de Beauvoir\u2019s reflections are discerning, thought-provoking, and in places even funny, like Bill Bryson<\/a> if he were a nerdy Frenchwoman with a taste for philosophy. \u201cTourism has a privileged character in America,\u201d she notes. Unlike in Europe, \u201cit doesn\u2019t cut you off from the country it\u2019s revealing to you; on the contrary, it\u2019s a way of entering it\u201d.<\/p>\n De Beauvoir, then 39 years old and yet to become famous in the English-speaking world, begins her trip in New York, a \u201ccity that\u2019s been deserted by men and invaded by the sky\u201d. There, she finds herself perpetually astonished, peering at street sellers\u2019 trinkets, sipping Scotch (\u201cone of the keys to America\u201d) with new friends, and strolling along distinctly un-European roads with unusual stores flanking them, including \u201ca tailor for fat men who exhibits photographs of the obese dressed with his help in jackets and trousers of incredible dimensions\u201d. <\/p>\n One night she attempts to smoke a joint at the Plaza Hotel. \u201cI swallow all the smoke, and no angel bothers to lift me from the earth: I must not be susceptible to marijuana.\u201d Another evening she is wowed by rush hour. \u201cSuddenly, the doors of the buildings release dark waves, a rising tide of humanity submerges the streets, and we\u2019re carried off in a whirl.\u201d Celebrity cameos \u2014 including Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong and the \u201cindefatigable\u201d Charlie Chaplin \u2014 abound.<\/p>\n \u2022 What we\u2019re reading this week \u2014 by the Times books team<\/a><\/p>\n After New York her account gets even richer. Some sites she celebrates and some she dismisses, but whatever her opinion she lavishes each place with the same vivid description. Washington DC is a city \u201cwhere history is petrified into boredom\u201d. In Niagara she observes that \u201cif the lake suddenly froze, it would give a long, tragic moan\u201d. A \u201cmonstrous\u201d hotel awaits her in Chicago, \u201cpermeated by a stifling heat and the thick scent of dollars\u201d. <\/p>\n Driving through Nevada, she stops at a gas station that is flanked with cages containing \u201ctwo monkeys, several snakes coiled up, a barn owl, a miserable vulture\u201d. The colours of the desert surrounding the Grand Canyon \u201cseem to have been painted by a megalomaniac Gauguin\u201d. In Virginia, she dismisses Williamsburg as \u201cone of the sorriest shams to which I\u2019ve ever fallen victim\u201d, and of Los Angeles she makes the truly majestic remark that \u201cthe Earth revolves in the quiet of the night with this shining wound in its side\u201d.<\/p>\n The Grand Canyon in the 1940s<\/p>\n INTERCONTINENTALE\/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n On top of all these fabulous portraits, de Beauvoir tackles the social issues then occupying the Land of the Free. Racial divisions she describes as \u201cthe great American dilemma\u201d; namely how the heralded Declaration of Independence and its inalienable rights are \u201cflagrantly contradicted by the situation of blacks\u201d, especially in the South. <\/p>\n She considers the treatment of the young author Calder Willingham, who was being sued by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice for his debut novel End as a Man, which \u201cdeals openly with homosexuality and vehemently attacks military schools\u201d. Men and women, her favourite topic, also get a classically Beauvoirian analysis. \u201cOnly after taking refuge in alcohol will [American] men and women consent to sexual adventures; then, they can bury them in the night of their conscience.\u201d<\/p>\n Santa Monica in California in 1951<\/p>\n ALAMY<\/p>\n![\"Book](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/\/c4822bf4-3d8a-4501-9238-4e32382a723c.jpg\")
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