America, America!

Abstract

This account was written during a four-month stay in Berkeley from May to August 2007. It was partly inspired by a diary published by Simone de Beauvoir after her four-month lecture tour to the US in 1947. We could not resist the temptation of writing a few pages about our impressions. This text is not intended as an essay about anthropological or chemical sciences. We merely tried to understand the conditions of the bubbling creativity that we have so often witnessed in Berkeley. Some of our comments are more or less voluntarily naïve, as if Voltaire's Candide had made a trip to America. Our impressions may appear a bit franchouillardes, and perhaps a trifle rude to our American hosts, whose kindness does not deserve such a harsh treatment.