Before a live audience

"And now ... Donny, in his second year, will perform Busy Beavers for us! Donny?"

The long, long walk from the front row up onto the stage. The awkward bow -- to an audience of perhaps 30, but an audience that seems vast enough to fill Carnegie Hall. The squirming about on the piano bench, trying to ignore the buzzing in one's ears.

You begin playing, making only occasional mistakes -- your sweaty fingers and your brain both on automatic pilot, until, two minutes later -- it's over! You stagger back to your seat to the polite applause of the bored parents of other young pianists.

The joys of being ten years old, at your first piano recital.

And today, the nightmare all comes back. My piano teacher has signed me up for a recital on December 11. This recital is sponsored by the music school through which I take lessons. Each teacher is expected to present two students. I'm one of hers.

She was apologetic. The notice was short. My heart palpitations were real. Her fear that I might quit taking lessons from her was not totally unfounded. She explained that she was required to place two names on the program, but that I -- as a mature and financially self-paying adult -- was not required to go through with it. Many of her students suddenly contract "illnesses" at the last moment, she assured me. It's my decision. Entirely.

I'd be playing the second movement to Beethoven's Pathetique sonata, the five-minute Adagio for which I first sought her guidance nearly two years ago. You'd think I could play it backwards and forwards by now.

She had me play it over again for her. She professed herself charmed. Perhaps a stumble here and there, a few missteps maybe. Perhaps a little excessively soft in the bass line? But, all in all, exhibiting great musicality on my part. My playing leaves her virtually in tears.

I regarded her raptures skeptically. Didn't my second year teacher say something equally soothing about my interpretation of Busy Beavers? Still, I've always been notably susceptible to flattery.

Will I actually show up? I'm going to work on my old friend from the Pathetique this week, and go over it again with her next lesson. I'll decide then.

She assures me that the music critic from the Seattle Times will not be present. Just a bunch of dewy-eyed parents, listeners who have ears only for their own precocious little dumplings.

Don't expect to hear more about this, by the way -- i.e., whether I chickened out, or showed up and shocked the audience with my incompetence. Don't expect me to tell you about it even if I actually show up and feel my performance was a musical triumph. I'm too easily deceived by a sense of my own awesomeness to be a fair judge.

No, unless a talent scout from Julliard happens to be present and offers me a scholarship, I think the outcome of this unfortunate affair will remain my private little secret.

To the barricades

If I could believe that going to a barricade would affect man's fate in the slightest I would go to that barricade, and quite often I wish that I could, but it would be less than honest to say that I expect to happen upon such a happy ending.
--Joan Didion (1970)

The rumble of street demonstations, the flash of police batons, and the smell of tear gas (or, more likely, pepper spray) once more assaults the senses. Seattle won't be excluded. Today, Seattle commuters nervously awaited the drive home. An organization demonstrating against the state's budget and in favor of "Jobs Not Cuts" announced plans to demonstrate during evening rush hour at the Montlake bridge, near my house -- one of the few bridges, aside from I-5, that link the downtown to Seattle "north of the cut," as well as to Seattle's north end suburbs. The original organizing group has been joined by other protest movements and by labor unions.

At the last minute, the demonstrators agreed to move the protest to the University bridge, to avoid interfering with emergency hospital traffic near Montlake. The Seattle Times now reports that about 700 demonstrators showed up, and were able to shut down bridge traffic for about an hour and a half.

On May 5, 6, and 8, 1970, University of Washington students protesting the Vietnam war shut down the I-5 freeway, marching four miles along the freeway from the University to downtown. Marchers were estimated to number 7,000, 10,000, and 15,000, respectively, on those three dates. No one in 1970 much cared whether emergency vehicles were being inconvenienced.

I doubt that the demonstrations in 1970 -- huge as they were -- hastened the end of American military involvement in Vietnam, over three years later. I have even greater doubt that the protests going on now will hasten bipartisan cooperation and national healing -- or stimulate the rise of a new and more responsible political party -- or ameliorate global economic trends beyond our ability to control.

The demonstrations in 1970 did permit students to blow off steam, and the protests occurring over the past few weeks do the same. I don't see what other purpose they can serve, other than inconvenience commuters -- also overwhelmingly part of the "99 percent" -- who just want to get home.

Sometimes, a really big protest movement does effect real change by overturning the government in power. France in 1789, Russia in 1917, Egypt in 2011. Unfortunately, such revolutions tend to be followed by unforeseen and unpleasant consequences. Even if the nation itself may, in the long run, be benefitted, the revolutionaries themselves often end up disillusioned, impoverished, and even, as the revolution feeds upon itself, executed.

Our 700 protesters at University bridge don't strike me as Jacobins or Octobrists. They seem to be nice folks who just hope for a better world for themselves and their families ... as do we all. Our problems seem insoluable at present, but maybe not. Maybe there are solutions to our dysfunctional political and economic system, and we'll find a way to muddle our way through to those solutions. I hope so.

But I doubt that blocking bridges is a step toward the answer.
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Photo: Seattle freeway protesters. May 5, 1970

Raccoon wars

The nice drugstore clerk seemed a bit surprised when I told her what I wanted: an old-fashioned transistor radio. No, I definitely didn't need earphones. Or MP3 compatibility, or whatever else they might have as options. (Nor will I be taking photos with it, or summoning up the internet.) But she had just what I wanted. Something by Sony, something you could have bought in 1970. And it cost just $19.99.

She would have been more surprised if I'd told her why I wanted it.

Persistent readers may recall my past discussions of what I like to term "the raccoon wars." If not, you may wish to click here and review the record. The raccoon who considers my house within his juridical boundaries has grown ever bolder. While I was off on vacation last month, my cat care person found it impossible to keep him from entering the cat door. He gobbled great quantities of cat food, despoiled the cats' water supply, wandered throughout the house, upstairs and down, and generally made himself at home.

Within a couple of hours of my return, he pushed his largeness in through the cat door, finding himself mildly surprised to confront me face to face. Later that week, while I was upstairs reading in bed, something large and bushy appeared in my peripheral vision. .... I looked up quickly, and there he was, my masked nemesis, mildly curious as to whether I might have stashed a little extra food somewhere within the bedroom.

But the radio, you ask? Be patient, I'm getting there. Next week, I'll be gone for four days over Thanksgiving, ok? Do I turn the house over to El Bandito? Not if I can help it. Someone told me that someone had told them that they knew of someone who kept a radio or TV booming loudly while they were out, thereby fooling their own wily raccoon into believing that someone was home.

I'm not going to leave my stereo booming for four days and nights, but I figure that a little radio with a couple of AA cells -- placed a couple of feet from the cat door -- might work. But who knows? This critter wasn't born yesterday, and he has nerves of steel. Or, should I say, brass.

If he isn't fooled, the next step will be a new cat door with electronic keys for my cats' collars. But, as I suggested in my earlier post, that would require hiring a carpenter to install a completely new back door with a properly sized cut in which to install the cat door.

If a hippie-era transistor radio works, I'd prefer to get by for a mere $19.99.

Voice in the wilderness

Belgrade, Yugoslavia. My fellow students and I -- undergraduates, naïve and excited -- were herded into a somber meeting room at the American Embassy. The Ambassador, a pleasant, middle aged gentleman, welcomed us to Yugoslavia and suggested things we might want to see and think about while visiting that Communist -- yet officially neutral -- nation.

Despite having read George F. Kennan's book, American Diplomacy, just a year earlier for a class in political science, I don't recall having been impressed by the fact that its author was now standing just a few feet in front of me, extending his welcome. Nor do I now recall anything specific that he told us.

What I didn't know about Mr. Kennan at the time would have filled a book. Several books, in fact. Over the years, I've come to realize that Kennan's importance in the shaping of post-war American foreign policy far exceeded that of his diplomatic mission to a country in the Balkans. A number of years ago, I read his two volumes of memoirs, and began to realize not only the importance of his thoughts and insights into foreign policy, but the complexity and subtlety of his withdrawn and reflective personality.

Then, yesterday, I read a feature-length review in the New Yorker of John Lewis Gaddis's new biography.¹ I had barely absorbed the New Yorker's analysis of Kennan's life, when this morning's New York Times book review section featured a similarly lengthy review of the Gaddis biography -- a review written by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Clearly the time has arrived for a new appraisal of this unusual diplomat, thinker, foreign policy analyst, and writer of careful and sensitive prose. Kennan's life and thought confronted difficult issues in American politics and diplomacy, issues that we have never resolved successfully, and probably never will.

How does a relatively transparent democracy with all its ambient noise and competing political demands -- i.e., a nation like the United States -- conduct a skillful, nuanced foreign policy that seeks to secure goals critical to its own interests -- not just goals that focus ahead a day or two, or until the next election, but ones that contemplate our relationship with the world 25 or 50 years in the future?

Kennan's fame today is as the author of the policy of "containment," a concept he first expressed in 1946 while he was posted to the American Embassy in Moscow. He explained his thoughts in a lengthy telegram to the State Department -- the legendary "Long Telegram," reputed to be the longest telegram ever received by State. He expanded his ideas a year later in an article published in Foreign Affairs under the pseudonym "X."

Kennan had never believed during World War II that the Soviets saw the Western allies as anything but allies of convenience, to be discarded as soon as the war ended. He was less concerned about the Soviet Union's being Communist than with its being Russian. Kennan was fluent in the Russian language. Although he loved Russian civilization and the Russian people, he had no illusions about the endemic paranoia of the Russian people, their longing for despotic leaders, and their historic urge toward territorial expansion -- national traits that shaped the character of both Tsarist Russia and the Communist Soviet Union. The Soviets should be "contained" whenever their urge towards expansion conflicted with American interests or world peace, Kennan urged. There was no need, however, to be proactive in the sense of attacking Russia -- no "pre-emptive strikes," as our present jargon would put it.

If successfully contained, Kennan argued, the Soviet Union would ultimately implode because -- ironically -- of its own internal contradictions. And so it did, nearly a half century later.

Kennan's long term analysis created a sensation both within and without the State Department, filling a vacuum in post-war foreign policy analysis in government circles. "Containment" became a catch phrase, shaping policies under the Truman, Eisenhower, and subsequent administrations. It became a justification for the war in Vietnam, a war that Kennan deplored.

Kennan soon felt that his theory of "containment" had been hijacked by militarists who used the concept to support the build-up of massive American military forces, resulting in the arms race of the Cold War. Although he believed that military force occasionally would be necessary in limited situations with limited objectives, Kennan conceived "containment" primarily in economic and diplomatic terms. Kissinger -- our quintessential "realist" in foreign policy -- seems to ignore or belittle this distinction in his review. He is attracted to the obvious realism in Kennan's own thought, but believes that Kennan "wimped out" when it came to putting it into practice.

Kennan's life and thought are fascinating as history. But more important are the questions his life and thought raise about our ability to shape and implement foreign policy objectives that are rational and directed to both the short term and the long term. Kennan strongly believed -- as does Kissinger, as indicated in his book Diplomacy -- that foreign policy is too important to be left to amateur politicians. To some degree, at least, it must be developed by experts who have devoted their professional lives to its study and practice. How to balance this need for expertise and dispassion with the demands of a democratic form of government is a question that awaits resolution.

This week's Republican debates regarding foreign policy do not offer much assurance that we have attained the proper balance.

In conclusion, Kennan's life and thought are worth study. The new Gaddis biography sounds like an excellent overview of the subject, one that I look forward to reading. I hope the publicity generated by this weekend's two excellent reviews of the biography encourages anyone interested in diplomacy and foreign policy to give it a read.
------------------------------------
¹ John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan, An American Life (Penguin Press 2011).

NOTE (11-14-11): The Economist's own review of Prof. Gaddis's biography, in this week's issue, points out that Gaddis has on past occasion expressed his admiration for the foreign policies of Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush. Gaddis clearly disagrees with Kennan's assessment of Reagan's foreign policy, which Kennan found to be "simply childish, inexcusably childish, unworthy of people charged with the responsibility of conducting the affairs of a great nation in an endangered world." Instead, Gaddis believes that Reagan actually brought Kennan's strategy to a successful conclusion. The Economist sides with Kennan, observing that

If Kennan's] concern for the costs of bellicose foreign policy, rather than [Reagan's] enthusiasm for imperial exercise of American power, had dominated the last decade, it would have made for a sounder grand strategy.

Amen.

Feet of clay

In a recent article discussing the growing popularity of pet care products, the Economist made the offhand and gratuitous comment that dogs

are costlier than cats, but superior in every respect.

Readers of the British magazine are, by nature, civilized and reserved. But eyebrows were raised in subsequent letters to the editor.

The Economist has long been a favorite magazine. The statement quoted above, however, made casually and neither ironically nor as the writer's quirky personal opinion but rather as the recitation of a well-established fact, is so startlingly bizarre and patently false that the journal's accuracy with respect to other matters -- as well as the good judgment of its editors -- is called into serious question.

I feel as though I had long relied upon the opinions of a distinguished Harvard professor, until -- one day -- his mask slipped, and behind the mask I discovered Rick Perry.

I'm not canceling my subscription, but will certainly read the Economist with a more skeptical eye in the future.

Caution in the Middle East

Iran is developing nuclear weapons. That seems probable, according to a report provided to the Security Council by the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency. Some of Iran's secret work might be devoted to peaceful use of nuclear energy, according to the report, but other efforts "are specific to nuclear weapsons."

For the past several weeks, Israel has been warning of a possible bombing attack on Iran's nuclear development sites. Many observers believe that the recent assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and the dissemination of a computer worm designed to interfere with operation of Iranian uranium enrichment centrifuges have been the work of Israeli and/or American agents.

I am totally against nuclear weapons proliferation. I have been hoping, despite evidence to the contrary, that Iran was sincere in its assertions that its nuclear program was designed solely for the peaceful use of atomic energy. The U.N. report, a copy of which was leaked this week, makes my hope seem excessively optimistic.

Nevertheless, the idea of an Israeli attack on Iran is appalling. The United States, rightly or wrongly, would be perceived as complicit in such an attack. The statement this week by a spokesman for the Obama administration was not helpful:

"We, of course, never remove from the table any option in a situation like this, but we are very focused on diplomacy," said White House spokesman Jay Carney.

Instead, we should have made it clear that we would have no part in any unilateral attack on Iran or any other country. Such a statement would not preclude participation in additional international sanctions, if necessary.

We are correct in fearing proliferation of nuclear weapons. But Iran is also correct in sensing a certain arrogance on America's part, the United States possessing an enormous nuclear arsenal of its own. And Israel? Israel maintains an official stance of ambiguity as to whether it possess nuclear weapons ("nuclear opacity," they call it), but, along with India, Pakistan and North Korea, is generally believed to have developed nuclear weapons capability. (Israel, unlike Iran, has never signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.) Iran may sense a certain hypocrisy in our willingness to accept nuclear armament by nations perceived as friendly, while attacking less friendly nations for taking even preparatory steps in that direction.

Aside from the legalities of both nuclear proliferation by Iran and of a pre-emptive attack on a sovereign nation by Israel, exactly what is it about Iran's achievement of a nuclear capacity that we feel might justify such an attack? Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad tend to speak in tones of inflated inflammatory hyperbole, which is unfortunate for the success of Iran's foreign relations. But Iran's actual foreign policy has been cautious.

In 1980, lest we forget, Iran was deliberately and viciously attacked by Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces, hoping to defeat Iran during a moment of weakness following the 1978 Revolution. The war lasted for eight years, with a devastating loss of Iranian life. Monuments to the men and boys who died in that war can be seen everywhere in Iran today. Iran suffered an estimated one million casualties, with many survivors still suffering from Iraq's use of chemical warfare.

Iranians remember well the horrors of war. They are not apt to leap willingly into a new one. Their rhetoric may sound wild, but they are not stupid: they know that a nuclear attack on Israel would bring swift retribution from many sources.

More likely, they would use their nuclear capability to increase their own credibility in foreign affairs. After the Kuwait war with Iraq, when the United States essentially eliminated Iraq's defensive capability in one day, a spokesman for another Arab country -- I don't recall which -- commented that no country would ever challenge the United States again militarily, unless it had nuclear weapons. Iranians may have been listening -- concerned less about their ability to defy America militarily than in their own ability to be taken seriously as a major player in the Middle East.

We would find a nuclear armed Iran to be an inconvenience in our relations with Middle Eastern countries. But the prospect of future inconvenience doesn't justify an attack. We dealt with similar "inconveniences" in our relations with the Soviet Union; we face similar inconveniences today in dealing with Russia and China. We can handle the diplomatic challenges.

If we look over the history of American relations in the Middle East, one lesson we should learn is that nothing is constant. A friend today is an enemy tomorrow, and vice versa. We covertly supported Saddam Hussein's war against Iran, because of the hostility of the Iranian clergy after their Revolution. Ten years later, we were attacking Iraq.

If the friendship of any nation in the Middle East today would be valuable to the United States, it would be that of Iran. The Iranian people are sophisticated, with a strong sense of pride in their nation and in its lengthy history of civilization. The country, despite years of international sanctions, is modern with a good infrastructure. Iran still has a large middle class with close ties to America and to the West in general. Today, we may feel that Iran's political leaders are impossible to deal with. These feelings can change quickly with time.

But time would not fade the memory of an armed attack so quickly. Ask any Iranian, conservative or liberal, devout or secular, and he or she will tell you that an armed attack on Iran would be a disaster for both Iran and the West. Such an attack would unite all factions against the attackers. It would unite the country behind its present rulers. It would not be forgotten, not for generations.

Let's not go there.

Bibliomania

I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.
~Anna Quindlen

Even as a sixth grader, I took loving delight in sorting and counting my small collection of books. I assigned certain types of books to certain locations. A series of American history books for kids (the Landmark series), for example, valued highly for the books' uniform size and consistent bindings, was displayed together on a shelf especially designed for them.

I accumulated books as other guys collect baseball cards. Unlike my similar obsession with stamp collecting, moreover, my attachment to books -- not just to their contents, but to their physical incarnations -- continued beyond adolescence.

Today, the most notable thing about the interior of my house is that virtually every wall surface of any size is lined with bookshelves. My books are in no way organized. At one time, I did dream of developing a card catalogue system -- perhaps computerized -- to help myself locate any book instantaneously. It never happened. Instead, I'm forced to rely on vague impressions that a certain book may have a red cover (or was it green?) and that I last saw it somewhere in the den.

What I now possess is partly a library, but partly the fruit of a hoarder's compulsion -- analogous, I nervously suspect, to those houses filled with old newspapers in which eccentric couples are occasionally discovered crushed to death by their own obsession.

These dark thoughts are prompted by an article in this week's New Yorker by Harvard professor James Wood. Wood recently found himself confronted with the need to clear a house full of books left behind by his deceased father-in-law. The old man had pursued many enthusiasms during his life, including travel. He had read extensively with respect to each new enthusiasm. And he'd kept all the books.

The result was an interesting and eclectic library. Unfortunately, Wood discovered, in today's world, no one wants interesting and eclectic libraries, especially ones consisting of old books. There are more old books than there are available bookshelves to hold them. No one wanted to buy the books at an estate sale. Nor could he give them away. Wood never reveals what ultimately became of the collection -- a few books were accepted by collectors who poked through the collection -- but the experience forced him to think about what book collections say about their collectors.

Not much, he decides. Who knows if the old guy even read most of them? The piles of books seemed to be mere monuments to knowledge that their owner possessed, or wished to possess, or wished to appear to possess. The fact that Wood didn't really much like his father-in-law seems to have sharpened his contempt for the gentleman's legacy.

I was struck, as I worked through my father-in-law's books, how quickly I became alienated from their rather stupid materiality. I began to resent his avariciousness, which resembled, in death, any other kind of avariciousness for objects.

So he spent his life buying books, Wood thinks. So what?

After all, can I really contend that my collection of books, ranged on shelves like some bogus declaration of achievement ..., tells my children anything more about me than my much smaller collection of postcards and photographs?

I feel somewhat devastated, reading these lines. Are my books simply a fraudulent assertion of my erudition? I walk about my house, gently carressing the covers of a few favorite, carefully-bound volumes.

I long ago promised a fellow book lover (Pat) that I'd leave him all of my books, should I move on to that Great Library in the Sky ahead of him. In fact I actually have that bequest written into my will. It was all in good fun for a long time, but lately, whenever the subject of my books arises, Pat nervously discusses the small amount of space available in his own home. My mind leaps forward, to those dread days following my hypothetical funeral; I see Pat wandering about my house, wringing his hands, wondering whatever he'll do with this unwelcome bounty. His wife would never allow him to haul them all into their home, even if there were room for them. Must he pay to put them into storage? He'll find no library or bookstore interested in them. Wood convinces me of that. But dare he -- a lover of books himself -- consign my gorgeous collection to the dump? I have bequeathed him a conundrum and a curse.

I pull myself together. Pat will just have to work it out on his own.

Wood is a good writer, and he managed to depress me, momentarily, with his certainties. And yet, I have certainties, too. My book collection, accumulated year by year since childhood, is an intellectual resource, a proven provider of amusement, and an anchor that gives my life -- with its ever-changing phases and interests -- a sense of continuity.

I have friends whose society is delightful to me; they are persons of all countries and of all ages; distinguished in war, in council, and in letters; easy to live with, always at my command.
~-Petrarch

Books are my friends, and, as with human friends, I'm not tossing them out simply because I don't know how they'll some day get along without me.

When the going was different

Trekking overseas always has its down times -- hanging out in airports, sprawled on the ground after a day's hike, snuggled up at night in your sleeping bag with a headlamp on your forehead -- times for relaxation when reading seems the perfect complement to the day's adventures. And books about travel seem most enjoyable when I myself am a traveler.

I took three such books with me to Nepal. One I've only begun reading. One was requisitioned by Pascal to press an unusual flower he discovered. But the third -- a sizeable tome -- I read from cover to cover.

Mark Twain, among his other claims to fame ("All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called 'Huckleberry Finn.'"--Ernest Hemingway), has been praised as America's first travel writer.

Until 1867, Twain was known merely as a humorist, lecturer, newspaper writer, and author of a highly popular collection of short essays called The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. But in that year, promoters organized a five-month tour of Europe and the Middle East -- perhaps the first organized American tour of foreign lands. The tour was by cruise ship -- the Quaker City -- a side-wheel steamer, with a leisurely schedule. Stops at ports of call were lengthy, allowing its seventy passengers to do extensive travel on their own before returning to the ship and proceeding to the next port.

Twain persuaded the editors of the Daily Alta California, a San Francisco newspaper, to pay his costs, in exchange for his weekly column to be dispatched from overseas. His dispatches, together with some additional concluding reports to the New York Herald and the New York Tribune, became America's first travel book -- The Innocents Abroad.

Twain's book makes great vacation reading. Leisurely and humorous, Innocents Abroad evokes a world where travel was slower, and where Americans were less aware of how life was lived abroad -- even in Western nations, such as France and Italy.

Crossing the Atlantic was in itself a lengthy endeavor, and not always pleasant. Twain discusses with relish his pleasure in being the only man within sight not flattened by seasickness. The Quaker City put in at the Azores, whose somewhat slow moving (and thinking) Portuguese inhabitants were themselves the object of Twain's curiosity and ridicule, before finally reaching the European continent at Gibralter.

Twain shared many of his nineteenth century compatriots' prejudices: contempt for European customs different from those of America; dislike of most great works of art and architecture, which he often considered dusty and boring; a rather startling Protestant boosterism and accompanying contempt for Catholicism. But, as his weekly dispatches reveal, Twain also showed growth and increased tolerance for cultural differences as the trip progressed.

To us today, perhaps, the most interesting portion of the book is the final third -- covering the visit to Turkey and, especially, the Holy Land. Most of the Middle East at the time was ruled from Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire, as it had been for centuries. European influence was minimal. Britain and France had not yet acquired their mandates as the spoils of World War I. Jews were a small minority group within Arab Palestine. The area was untouristed, dirty, impoverished, sleepy, and -- to Twain, at least -- often appalling.

His party worked its way down from Damascas, through the Holy Land, and finally to Egypt. What impresses today is that -- to his group, at least -- the term "Holy Land" was not simply a geographical description. His fellow travelers, like perhaps most Westerners for years to come, were visiting Palestine as religious pilgrims as much as tourists. They were in awe to find themselves walking in the actual footsteps of Jesus himself, actually visiting places they had been reading about and viewing in illustrations since childhood.

Even Twain, the cynic -- but a cynic who generally refers to Jesus as "Our Savior" --was often impressed, even as he scoffed at the multitudes of splinters advertised as relics of the True Cross, and at the claims by religious orders to have determined the exact location of various events from the Bible, locations on which they built their churches and chapels.

Innocents Abroad captures a picture of the Holy Land at a time when it had changed little physically since Biblical times; it also captures an image of Americans who, whatever their professed religious beliefs at the time of the trip, were profoundly moved by a visit to this legendary part of the world, Americans who almost universally had been strongly influenced by Protestant childhoods and years of attendance at Sunday School.

Finally, the book is interesting as marking Twain's transition from a popular humorist to a serious literary writer. As Jane Jacobs, who wrote the introduction to my edition of the book, concludes:

Without falsifying the distinct American sensibility that singled out Twain, then and now, as the quintessential American author, he stepped from -- or alongside -- his culture into a larger and different context. The Mark Twain who, by upbringing was Tom Sawyer and a Connecticut Yankee, became the mature Mark Twain who could inhabit both Huck, the orphaned redneck, and Jim, the runaway slave.

Mark Twain's mental growth, observable throughout his five months of newspaper essays, is emblematic of America's own similar growth and increased maturity in the nearly century and a half since Innocents Abroad was published.

It also suggests an excellent reason to encourage travel abroad by all Americans.

A year after his return, Twain concluded the book with a retrospective newspaper account of the trip, expressing sentiments with which all travelers can sympathize:

Nearly one year has flown since this notable pilgrimage was ended, and as I sit here at home in San Francisco thinking, I am moved to confess that day by day the mass of my memories of the excursion have grown more and more pleasant as the disagreeable incidents of travel which encumbered them flitted one by one out of my mind -- and now, if the Quaker City were weighing her anchor to sail away on the same cruise again, nothing could gratify me more than to be a passenger.

Mark Twain is always a good travel companion, and never better than when sharing his own thoughts and feelings while he himself is traveling.