ABSTRACT
Americans are difficult people. When not caught so young, Americans are rather more difficult to train. If socialization fails, then the second line of defence is to patronize American universities. Innes/Stewart provides a thread to guide us through the labyrinth of British university fiction’s attitude to America and Americans. His view of the Rhodes Scholarship’s socializing potential is confirmed in two novels written by American recipients. Travellers’ tales about America reverse the flow of bodies without changing attitudes. The American version is optimistically assertive, its British counterpart pessimistically defensive. American university fiction represents a major challenge to its British competitor. American cultural specificities refract the English argument. It is this refraction, the collision between the dominant British discourse and a less limited American discourse that is well able to look after itself, that makes the United States such difficult territory for British university fiction.
