A More Or Less Accurate Measure Of

So Many Bright Futures Consigned To The Ashes Of The Past.so Many Dreams Lost In The Madness That Had Engulfed Us.except For A Few Widely Scattered Shouts Of Joy,the Survivors Of The Abyss Sat Hollow-eyed And Silent, Trying To Comprehend A World Without War.

Exploration Belongs To The Renaissance, Travel To The Bourgeois Age, Tourism To Our Proletarian Moment.the Explorer Seeks Theundiscovered, The Traveler That Which Has Been Discovered By The Mind Working In History,the Tourist That Which Has Been Discovered By Entrepreneurship And Prepared For Him By The Arts Of Mass Publicity.if The Explorer Moves Toward The Risks Of The Formless And The Unknown, The Tourist Moves Toward The Security Of Pure Cliché. It Is Between These Two Poles That The Traveler Mediates.

If The Guidebook Used To Be Critical, Today It Seems Largely A Celebratory Adjunct To The Publicity Operations Of Hotels, Resorts, And Even Countries.

Travel At Its Truest Is Thus An Ironic Experience, And The Best Travellers . . . Seem To Be Those Able To Hold Two Or Three Inconsistent Ideas In Their Minds At The Same Time, Or Able To Regard Themselves As At Once Serious Persons And Clowns.

Things Without Defense: Insects, Kittens, Small Boys.