He’s the glamour boy of French philosophy, and I was going to have dinner with him! Bernard-Henri Lévy was scheduled to be in San Francisco for three days, and his publicist had arranged for dinner at his hotel with the man Vanity Fair called “superman and prophet.”

I show up at the Hotel Prescott on time with two of my colleagues here at FrancePress. At the front desk we are told that Mr. Lévy hasn’t checked in yet and decide to wait for him in the hotel restaurant. When the prophet shows up an hour later in his signature outfit (dark suit and white unbuttoned shirt showing a few chest hairs), he is “d’une humeur de chien”—his plane from D.C. has been delayed for two hours, nobody was waiting for him at the airport (for superman!) and now he’s expected to hold court with journalists? He says he is short on time (he has an op-ed to write for the Wall Street Journal), orders a medium rare steak without garlic and onions (to which he’s allergic), no drinks. BHL hasn’t a moment to spare.

But once he starts talking about American Vertigo and the warm welcome he has received all over the States, our man starts to loosen up. His love for the United States is obvious. “Everyone told me the United States was Francophobe, that I’d find antipathy and mistrust at every turn, but I haven’t met anyone here (apart from Washington politicians) who showed hostility because I’m French. Americans have their faults, but being stupidly racist against the French isn’t one of them,” he says.

He admires Americans for their “ferocious individualism” and “survival instincts” and he sees the home-schooling movement as a prime example. “The United States has a capacity for resistance and survival that is incredibly stronger than what we have in Europe. The school system is a wreck, but in the States citizens from the left and the right, Protestants and Catholics, Jews and atheists, takes things in hand and say, We’re going to save the children because the institution is falling apart.”

Lévy loves Seattle, Savannah, Chicago and San Francisco for their “urbanophilie” (“the idea that residents cherish and defend their city ”). He is fond of Hollywood star/activist Warren Beatty, who dares to denounce “the dictatorship of this new master, Opinion, which decrees to all politicians what their choices will be,” and who, says BHL, should be the next president of the United States.

At the end of our talk he’s softened up and even thanks us for putting him in a much better mood. BHL is charming.