Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

The stories in this book are from the past. They did not predict the future when they were written, and while some of the dreams expressed in them have come to fruition, others have foundered. These are non-agenda-driven accounts of particular places at particular times. Even the most intensively reported pieces do not reflect expertise in their locations. I was in Russia a good bit and have often traveled in China, but I visited Afghanistan for less than two weeks, Libya for six. I did plenty of research before, after, and during these trips and have kept up with many of the people I got to know, but my observations are based on a relative breadth of cumulative knowledge rather than depth of singular knowledge. I can’t compete with sinologists or Kremlinologists or Africanists. My art writing has been more about artists than about what they have produced. Complex stories are best told by those who can embrace complexity, and art forces its makers to grapple with social ambiguities and tensions. These reports are in many ways psychological studies rather than political ones, documents of a passing zeitgeist rather than policy papers. I am only a generalist, a collector of experiences, and an eccentric one at that.

Reading through one’s assembled work is a humbling, occasionally agonizing experience. While these stories reflect a world in flux and development, they also reflect my own flux and development, and I have resisted the impulse to edit them to hew to my current opinions and perceptions. This is what I wrote then, not what I would write today. If it is disappointing to grow old, it is likewise embarrassing to have been young. One is startled by what one did then but wouldn’t do now. Having started out from the rather supercilious perspective that the problems of both nations and individuals could be solved, I have come to believe that accepting problems is often wiser than trying to fix them. I have attempted to find patterns in the few things that change—new borders, general progress on civil and disability rights—and the many things that don’t—the failure of elections to bring justice, the tendency of power to corrupt. I’ve tried to become less prescriptive, better at questions and less quick with answers. I used to be sure of transformative revolution, but I still believe in ameliorative evolution. Yet the convictions that now appear naïve motivated some of my investigations of other cultures.

I have revised some of these articles a bit, a few significantly, and others not at all. I have used longer versions of a few articles that were cut for length. When I went on assignment to write travel articles on Brazil and Myanmar, I had this book in mind and so did the reporting for longer essays than I’d been commissioned to write. I have eliminated outdated travel recommendations from stories that included them. The articles appear largely chronologically, though I have attempted to prioritize the chronology of reporting over the chronology of publication. I have moved around a few stories because I did additional reporting after a story was published and wanted to include the newer information. (My comments about the Qianlong Garden, however, are placed in keeping with my visit there, even though I learned more about it in the years that followed.) For each article, I’ve written a few new paragraphs to provide context both within my experience and in light of ensuing events. I have not annotated the previously published articles, which were fact-checked at the time of publication. I have, however, put together end notes for new material, both to explain where I got the information and to provide resources for those who may wish to pursue these topics further.

I am interested in beauty as well as truth. I started writing for Travel + Leisure in 1996 and soon discovered that writing frequently about travel is work, but doing so once a year amounts to a paid holiday. I also realized that most journalists for the magazine wanted to write about a spa hotel in Positano or a resort in Nevis, but that such articles require a visit of only a day or two, while articles on more obscure destinations demand much longer stays and much deeper research. Sometimes, I simply loved these countries and took pleasure in saying why; indeed, saying why often helped me love the places. Vacations without reporting now feel weird to me; they lack the excuse for asking questions. It can be unsettling to shift rapidly from reporting on wars and desolation to reporting on restaurants and touristic sights, but both are elements in the larger project of engaging with the world and so ultimately feed a single truth.