ABSTRACT
E. P. THOMPSON'S POSTWAR CRITICAL STANCE TOWARD AMERICA's DIGESTIVE power is patent in his satirical sketch of a professor of English employed by a small New England college, featured in the British Communist Party's American Threat to British Culture (c. 1951).2 The professor is a hybrid ofthe hypocritical high-cultural dude and the vernacular show-me-the-money cowboy. In conversation with Thompson the professor regretted not having "'[made] good' in a big way in the postwar boom." After World War I he had taught in the Near East and saw the need for fresh meat. "Squar[ing] his jaw above his virile cowboy-style shirt with the decision of a J.P. Morgan" and "glower[ing] through his horn-rimmed spectacles," the professor said that back then he should have '"chucked all this Shakespeare stuff,"' purchased refrigerators, "'set up a chain of slaughterhouses throughout the Holy Land,"' and '"cleaned up!"' This "imperialist Babbitt," Thompson jibed, "was not pulling [his ]leg": "The 'American Dream' really is as childish and as debased as this and its poison can be found in every field of American life" (25).
