The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home

One of his better works - apparently I'm better with rootless people than with people with a strong sense of identity.

Iyer is by far my favorite travel writer

there is no argument. If the global soul is truly the modern condition, then why does Iyer spend 200 odd pages describing scenes we've all experienced. This book might have been titled "A portrait of the global soul for those who have never left the town they were porn in."

I stopped in a convenience store on Beacon Hill for a snack and while I got out my wallet to pay I place my library book copy of The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home (2000) by Pico Iyer on the counter. The woman working the register exclaimed “Oh Mr. Bean, he’s so funny! He has a new movie coming out you know.” The cover of the book has a picture of...more

I stopped in a convenience store on Beacon Hill for a snack and while I got out my wallet to pay I place my library book copy of The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home (2000) by Pico Iyer on the counter. The woman working the register exclaimed “Oh Mr. Bean, he’s so funny! He has a new movie coming out you know.” The cover of the book has a picture of a train station somewhere in Asia where a poster of Rowan Atkinson’s character hangs. This exchange seemed so appropriate to the theme of the book. Here across from the Massachusetts State House, two people not native to Boston - I believe she was from Vietnam and I’m an American of Irish descent - talked about an English comedian. The Global Soul explores how the cultures of the world have become mixed up and the people as well have become far flung, leading to a sense of “floatingness” where people still yearn for a home. Iyer himself is a global soul of Indian descent, born and educated in England, transplant to California, and a second home in Japan. As a writer for Time magazine he travels the world and finds more and more global souls like himself in a multicultural soup that is becoming more unicultural under the influence of corporate interests. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of the global soul. “The Airport” is Iyer’s month long adventure at Los Angeles International an international city without the city. In “The Global Marketplace” Iyer spends time in the hotels of Hong Kong where globetrotting business people conduct transactions in-between accruing frequent flier miles. Another city where people come from the wide world over sometimes to clash, sometimes to shop is Toronto, described in “The Multiculture.” In “The Games” Iyer details experiences at the several Olympics he has covered as a reporter, specifically the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta. In “The Empire” Iyer returns to the land of his youth, England, a country which once controlled people throughout the world and is now filling up with those same people, many of whom seem to have a better concept of what it means to be English than the English. In the final chapter, “The Alien Home” Iyer visits where he somehow feels most at home despite being the ultimate outsider. Overall the book is pretty good but it has its negative aspects as well. First, there are just far too many times where he gives examples of crazy multicultural pairings in the most unique places for it to even be a worthwhile example anymore. Imagine stories like that of the first paragraph of this post told over and over again with no seeming self-awareness of my repetitiveness. Second, Iyer writes with such a dour tone throughout the book. I suppose I can’t criticize him for being depressed by the whole thing, but surely there’s something good about mixing of cultures throughout the world. Surely I’ve appreciated learning from other cultures and enjoying their arts, foods, and traditions in my lifetime, but then again I’m a white American so I may be able to enjoy the good parts without having to endure the pain and prejudices.   hide

I was reading this roughly at the same time as my re-reading of Toffler's Future Shock. The two view the cultural and social shifts from two different points of view - one looks into the future and the other observes it all around. Great reading and interesting insights into the evolving world.

a book that sets its reader thinking about living in this shrinking world. pico can be witty and funny and serious all at the same time. the phrase "If you decorate a simple room with a single chrysanthemum, it will concentrate the mind and consecrate the flower." got me tidying up my room :p

Handbook to Sonja Lind.