The Thumbnail Book Reviews

by John Q McDonald --- 3 July 2008

Video Night in Kathmandu

And Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East

by Pico Iyer

For generations, there has been much handwringing about America's cultural influence on the rest of the world. Entire realms of study and literature, as well as entertainment, have been spawned on this subject alone. As economic globalization has progressed in the past few decades, though, America's hegemony has become so pervasive that we seem to be in danger of becoming one globally homogeneous culture. In reality, though, there are everywhere broad and deep cultural differences. America's presence seems to reside only on the surface of these other cultures, a crust of cultural flotsam over an alien sea. Still, that homogeneity is increasingly visible to the traveler. That cultures seek to emulate American style is the result of both a kind of cultural imperialism and of an absorption on the part of the invaded people. They, too, may make as much use of American ways as America does of their resources. Perhaps. But when a culture, such as China, seeks to emulate America's standard of consumption, in this increasingly fragile and intertwined world, we may see a level of destruction and resource consumption that this planet simply can not sustain. What then?

A lot of these questions have come into sharper focus since this book was published in the late 1980s. Pico Iyer, here compiles his journeys to several Asian nations. On his trips, he has discovered varying levels of Western influence. The book distills his observations of places as diverse as Tibet, Bali, Japan, Manila and India (among others). The book is dense and personal, and is a deep examination of these cultures' collision with Western ways and Western desires. That it is somewhat dated, coming from a generation ago, is only a mild drawback to what is otherwise fairly compelling travel and cultural reading. Most especially, the effect of the internet has yet to overwhelm the world with connectivity and random information (and book reviews). It would be difficult to encapsulate all that Iyer explores in all these regions. We see Western hippie travelers in a rundown hotel in Lhasa, Tibet. There are prostitutes hanging around bars in Manila and Bangkok. He visits with a trishaw driver in Burma and goes to a tightly controlled baseball game in Japan. He hangs around with yuppie entrepeneurs in Hong Kong. And he parties with Australian tourists in Bali. Plus, he visits the nascent capitalist communist cities of southern China. And he tries to explain Bollywood to Western readers. There is a personal tone to his essays, particularly when he writes about the people he meets and his ongoing correspondence with them, as well as about India, the country of his ancestry. There is a sensitive, subtle, and often touching insight in the way he picks out these experiences from an otherwise sprawling journey that must include many months of travel. As travel books go, it is unusual in its focus. It is of its time, but it is also an historical document of an entire region struggling with the early depths of rampant globalization. The book is fascinating and haunting. There is much here that is alternately depressing and exhilarating.

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Also by Pico Iyer: [The Open Road]

[Other Travel Books]

[Other Books about Tibet and the Himalayas]