YES,34, 2004 YES,34, 2004 279 279 and, as is fashionable, seeks to use only works of 'literature'to reveal fundamental culturalvalues. A brief review allows no space to discuss the comparative merits/defects of the methodologies. Suffice it to claim that one has, in Jackson Turner, a master narrativeof historicaldevelopment into which all detailsare melded, and, on the other, we are offered a literary anthology ranging from Smith and the Edgeworths to Julian Barnes and Derrida via Chateaubriand and Hugo, Dickens, Symons, and Arnold, which sweeps up with the canonical names a host of lesserknown authors: William Dyce, for instance, and the Reverend George Musgrave Musgrave [sic]. This anthology, historically ordered, is thematically clustered around a series of geographical places or experiences: 'Romantic promontories', the crossing itself, travellers'experiences of coastal ports from Rye to Dieppe, and so on. The text seeksout linksand disparitiesbetween English/British experiencesand those of the French, or examines the possibilitiesof hybridity (throughfigures such as Arthur Symons). 'The Channel may be a barrier,a gap, a means of access, a test, a void, a more or lesswell- or ill- disposedanimate being. Its coasts are edges [...] borders, defences, resorts, places of change, ambiguities and transformations'(p. 158). In short, there are many ways of writing about the Channel. The riskof this Baconian empiricismis that it dissolvesinto mere lists and mere conjunctions,which are not necessarilyilluminating.Arnold was gloomy on Dover Beach; Michelet, in LaMer,was more optimistic.On the other hand, the conjunctions become especially provocative and exciting as the argument approaches contemporary dilemmas. The comparison of Britain to the Falklandsand Europe to South America should start a lively debate, as should Derrida's designation of Europe as a little cape of the Asiatic continent (pp. I47-53). Does the Channel separatethe westwardislandsfrom that cape, or are all frontiersnow dissolvingin the westwardmovement of Asia? CARDIFF UNIVERSITY MALCOLM KELSALL LostintheAmerican City:Dickens, James,KaJka. ByJEREMY TAMBLING. Basingstokeand New York: Palgrave. 2001. xvii + 229 pp. C32.50. ISBN:0-312-23840-I. One of the most pleasing aspects of this very interesting study is attributableto Jeremy Tambling 'adding my own itinerary'to those of his diverse authors,revelling in 'the pleasure of walkingthe streets,my only way of seeing cities', but at the same time registeringthat he cuts a somewhat unusual figure in usingJames's The American Scene (I905) 'as guide book' (p. xv).If this seems a bit literalistfor these more theorized times, it proves far less so than relyingon, say, a contemporaryBaedeker (therewere foureditionsof United States ofAmerica, the last datingfrom 1909), in large part because Tambling is tracing impressions rather than facts, and because he remains adept at maintaining his focus upon a given book even when he needs to broaden the context, either by reference to another interpreteror by historical reconstruction.This is all the more necessary, and all the more welcome, as there cannot be very many readers-as Tambling obviously realizes -who, familiar with any one of his chosen texts (Dickens'sAmerican NotesFor General Circulation, James's TheAmerican Scene,and Kafka'sAmerika / Der Verschollene), will have more than a nodding acquaintancewith, or indeed any actualexperience of, either of the others. Thus challenged, Tambling adopts the eminently sensiblestrategyof letting and, as is fashionable, seeks to use only works of 'literature'to reveal fundamental culturalvalues. A brief review allows no space to discuss the comparative merits/defects of the methodologies. Suffice it to claim that one has, in Jackson Turner, a master narrativeof historicaldevelopment into which all detailsare melded, and, on the other, we are offered a literary anthology ranging from Smith and the Edgeworths to Julian Barnes and Derrida via Chateaubriand and Hugo, Dickens, Symons, and Arnold, which sweeps up with the canonical names a host of lesserknown authors: William Dyce, for instance, and the Reverend George Musgrave Musgrave [sic]. This anthology, historically ordered, is thematically clustered around a series of geographical places or experiences: 'Romantic promontories', the crossing itself, travellers'experiences of coastal ports from Rye to Dieppe, and so on. The text seeksout linksand disparitiesbetween English/British experiencesand those of the French, or examines the possibilitiesof hybridity (throughfigures such as Arthur Symons). 'The Channel may be a barrier,a gap, a...