SOURCE: “The Sport of American-Bashing in Modern English Authors,” in Studies in the Novel, Vol. 20, No. 3, Fall 1988, pp. 316-22.

In the following essay, Cohen describes the mild nature of Wodehouse's anti-American humor, asserting that “his bashing of Americans is as unmalicious as befits an Englishman who would eventually become an American citizen.”

In Evelyn Waugh's collection of travel pieces When the Going Was Good (1946), there is a scene at the tombs and pyramids in Sakkara. Waugh, who has already examined one of the tombs, emerges to find a party of Americans, led by an Egyptian guide, about to enter the underground caverns. He turns and follows them back in.¹ Why? Not to be enlightened by their dragoman—not because he craves company, but for one reason that becomes obvious in the descriptions that follow: to get material for American-bashing. Waugh is one of a number of English authors...