A Tall Order

I am working on my blog entry(ies, let's be honest) about Turkey, and I came across this article by George Saunders from GQ about Dubai. It's brilliance has (nearly) caused me a sudden and complete case of writer's block. Hopefully, my writing about Turkey will be able to capture a fraction of the magic that Saunders manages in his travel writing. I was especially moved by a section that I have shortened below, but his whole piece was amazing. Go read it. Seriously. It was funny, both clever and glib, but also honest and meaningful, all while making you feel as if you have hitched a ride to Dubai in his suitcase-just what good travel writing should be, in my opinion. And that's a tall order to fill, even if I've imposed it on myself.

David Silverman/Getty Images, Life

...it occurred to me that the American sense of sophistication/irony—our cleverness, our glibness, our rapid-fire delivery, our rejection of gentility, our denial of tradition, our blunt realism—which can be a form of greatness when it manifests in a Gershwin, an Ellington, a Jackson Pollock—also causes us to (wrongly) assume a corresponding level of sophistication/irony/worldliness in the people of other nations.

My experience has been that the poor, simple people of the world admire us, are enamored of our boldness, are hopeful that the insanely positive values we espouse can be actualized in the world. They are, in other words, rooting for us. Which means that when we disappoint them—when we come in too big, kill innocents, when our powers of discernment are diminished by our frenzied, self-protective, fearful post-9/11 energy—we have the potential to disappoint them, bitterly, and drive them away.