As I work to complete a new manuscript, a caravan of unrelated words has trekked across my desk this week like carpenter ants headed towards the support beams of a wooden house. I watch the procession knowing what's coming but unable to act. A line in Richard Tomkins article on contemporary stress in the March 20 The Financial Times jumps out: "The nine to five job is extinct: in the US people now talk about the 24-seven job, meaning one that requires your commitment 24 hours a day, seven days a week... It is not more time we need: it is fewer desires." I pick up the catalog at the 19th Paris Salon du Livre and note that it is 50 percent thicker than last year's with lots of new and larger exhibitors but a closer look reveals that they are owned by fewer and fewer publishers. I go onto the Internet to check out a web site known for its attractive airfares to Paris and find myself tempted to click on an animated banner to receive the Tide detergent newsletter, a place where the community of soap consumers can share their cleaning experiences. I hear that MCI WorldCom sells pre-paid telephone cards that might be useful for tourists coming to Paris and I call the toll-free number and speak to a woman whose function has been so reduced to the answering of three questions that she put me on hold to check when I asked her for the country code for Jupiter. The ubiquitous spots on CNN for that phone company advertise that their operators speak English 24-hours a day, seven days a week. But do they understand or have anything to say? Excerpts are printed in the papers from Bill Gates' new book, "Business @ The Speed of Thought," which got me thinking about both business and the speed of thought. How can you do business as fast as an idea comes into your head? In a letter that arrives from my brother in New York I read the line: "It'd be nice to see your handwriting," and I realize I haven't written a letter in a decade.
My editor at this
paper calls and asks me to write an update on the theme of
the ugly American. This gets me thinking about what ugly means.
And American. The ugly Americans of the early days of mass
tourism were coined this way because they were ignorant; they
didn't know how to be culturally sensitive to differences.
They were over-demanding because they were impoverished by
lack of information. Ugliness represented the un-aesthetic
behavior of an unknowing individual.
Today, there's no excuse to not know. Even the Librarian at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC recently admitted that we know too much and understand too little. Ugliness at the end of this millennium comes not from ignorance but a fathomless stockpile of what one wants. And the confusion of endless choice that accompanies rising prosperity. A colleague told me the other day that there are 4,500 new millionaires in the US each month. A friend visiting Paris from his native LA last week told me that he decided to move here because a woman who smiled at him agreed to have a coffee with him. "We don't do that anymore back home." The ugly American steals a week in Paris to climb out of his or her "in box" where 95 emails marked "urgent" scream for attention. The ugly American comes to Paris to change the backdrop of his or her screen saver. The ugly American wants everything that he knows exists top quality, comfort and economy of motion and time and scale. He requires efficiency and charm. He wants the world to have stopped in the 17th century in his hotel lobby but the 21st century in his room. He wants to slow down the week he's in Paris but is impatient for that to happen. He wants to be momentarily unplugged while staying perfectly in tune. The ugly American is on the fast track to breakdown. In the '70s, some of us hailed a book and concept called "Small is Beautiful." For the time being, "Business @ the Speed of Thought" has not been challenged by "Slow is Beautiful." There is some quaint comfort in talking about our lives in the digital age as belonging to communities, but community is really a disguise for market. We belong to a collection of different markets with knowable demographics and patterns of consumption. When you act as a unique individual you're of less interest to the new creative leaders of our age; you're a broken "cookie." The book fair in Paris last month resembled greatly the other fairs that were happening alongside it: the Salon de l'Etudiant, the Salon de la Franchise, the Salon du Tourisme. The halls were decked out like Java-scripted banners imploring us to commit to a click-through and leave a business card or thumbprint while doing so. This isn't a trap; it's embedded in us, and the dangerous thing is that it makes sense. How does one read a book in the age of "Business @ The Speed of Thought?" What happened to candlelight in the digital age? The ugly American comes to Paris to renew the tiny bit of individuality that is left in him. Be nice to the ugly American; it's not his fault. David Applefield edits the literary journal Frank and the Paris web site www.paris-anglo.com. His books include the guide book "Paris Inside Out" and the novel "Once Removed." |
