This Winter Break I went to India and finished “Infinite Jest.” India was an experience: I still haven’t quite processed it, but I’m getting closer. On my last night in Kolkata, I bought a couple illegible children’s books, one comic book, and one “Lonely Planet Magazine, India.” Not on India. For Indian people. Like, all the mini-guides on travel-destinations have a “Fancy a Curry” section. Better yet: the December 2010 issue is the USA Special. I nearly had a heart attack when I saw this on the rack. Featuring: Vegas (“Win big, pretend you’re in Paris. Or wear a pink wig-anything goes!”), Texas (“Adult warning- you’re going to need lots of beer with this story”), Grand Teton, the Florida Keys, and New England. No New York. No California, outside of a road trip guide that starts in LA. The cover is Vegas, Elvis, and a Marlboro man, reinforcing my Jest-influenced, and Vegas-confirmed conviction that that impossible city in Nevada has distilled a unique and essential part of the American Spirit. But that’s another article.

The point of this article is to call attention to a fascinating artifact. Our culture analyzed through another’s eyes. I can’t post the whole magazine, but I thought I’d share cover and the editor’s intro. Trust me, its an interesting read.

Trust me, the USA is an interesting country.
It couldn’t be anything else, given its incredibly mixed population and its startling size (go check it out on a globe instead of a map and you’ll see what I mean). Where else would you get half the scientists working on incredibly advanced military technology, while have the populace believes it has been abducted by aliens? Or a country that runs half the world, but half of whose citizens (I’m assuming this isn’t the alien-abducted half) don’t have passports?

Also, which other country would make everyone else so schizophrenic? Which other country would make people moan about the paucity of American culture – while eating a burger in a Gap t-shirt? Or make people want to go work there while at the same time talking about how uneducated Americans are? Or, take recent history: which other country’s president excites us this much when he decides to visit, even if the visit is generally declared to be as useful as a weekend with your mother-in-law?

It really isn’t that daft a country, you know. A lot of Americans might not know much beyond their own borders, but a country doesn’t get this rich and powerful just by having a pretty flag. And it’s a hell of a lot more diverse than TV tells us. Whether its chili-eating cowboys in Texas, gorgeous lakes in the Rockies, people living the good life in Florida, people living the really good (and slightly unreal) life in Vegas, or inbred cannibals in the deep South (not in this issue, sadly), there’s plenty to see here.

And yes, it is all interesting.

Vardhan Kondvikar, Editor