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Oscar Hijuelos: There is much discussion about the “dumbing down of America.” Living in London, do you see this as being true? Or do you think that an old truth is just finally coming out? Guillermo Cabrera Infante: It is not a dumbing down but a dumping ground. Gertrude Stein once said that the glory of England was their literature of the small village. She was probably referring to Jane Austen, but that no longer pertains. English literature lost, at least for me, with the death of Burgess, Waugh and Wodehouse, what was known as the English sense of humor. Now is the time of the Anglo-Indian with Rushdie, Seth and Indian women writers. Of course the best of them is V.S. Naipaul, a master of the English language. Was it Napoleon who said, “England is a country of Indian shopkeepers?” —BOMB 70, 2000

Oscar Hijuelos: There is much discussion about the “dumbing down of America.” Living in London, do you see this as being true? Or do you think that an old truth is just finally coming out?

Guillermo Cabrera Infante: It is not a dumbing down but a dumping ground. Gertrude Stein once said that the glory of England was their literature of the small village. She was probably referring to Jane Austen, but that no longer pertains. English literature lost, at least for me, with the death of Burgess, Waugh and Wodehouse, what was known as the English sense of humor. Now is the time of the Anglo-Indian with Rushdie, Seth and Indian women writers. Of course the best of them is V.S. Naipaul, a master of the English language. Was it Napoleon who said, “England is a country of Indian shopkeepers?”

—BOMB 70, 2000

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