| ABOUT THE
BOOK SMALL WORLD:
A MICROCOSMIC JOURNEY is a tour of tiny American hamlets along the
road less traveled, a journey through a world of stories – from Athens
(New York) to Amsterdam (Montana), from Cairo (Illinois) to Calcutta
(West Virginia), from Paris (Kentucky) to Prague (Nebraska).
SMALL WORLD is more than just a romp through small towns with
grandiose names. To be sure, there are a good many detours into humor
and whimsy – encounters with brazen nudists and stoned-out hippies,
hermits and Hare Krishnas. But the journey also offers historical
perspective and insight and profundity. It is no accident that the
journey ends on the first anniversary of the World Trade Center
attacks – in the desert hamlet of Mecca (California). SMALL WORLD is
an examination of America in the wake of (supposedly) The Day That
Changed It, as seen through the prism of dwindling communities that
may soon be mere historical and geographical footnotes.
Following the shock of 9/11 the great majority of Americas reveled in
allegiance to country, more so that at any time in the past
half-century. Ask what we were defending, however, and the usual reply
offered only sound bites and vague abstractions. Listening to the
typical American describe the provenance of his patriotism is a bit
like listening to a book report by an eighth-grader who read only the
back cover. A great many patriots have largely lost touch with
America. We understand our world by expanding our reach, and it begins
with the world close to home.
SMALL WORLD is about people trying to survive in the nation’s nooks
and crannies – the citizen of historic Athens (New York) trying to
save the Hudson River environs by fighting construction of a massive
power plant, the ranchers in Rome (Oregon) trying to save their land
from what they consider to be overzealous environmentalists, the
African-American city treasurer of Cairo (Illinois) working to save a
city that was nearly destroyed by racial unrest a generation ago, the
principal of an elementary school in Mecca (California) trying to
educate the sons and daughters of migrant workers, the wife of a
30-year POW-MIA from Bagdad (Arizona) still clinging to hope and
admitting, “I’m neither a wife nor a widow.”
The United States is less a melting pot than a masterpiece of
pointillism, a dot painting defined not by the broad strokes of
mainstream media and metropolitan muscle, but by the smallest dots on
the map. The colors blend from a distance; they stand out boldly from
up close. If you want to understand America, you have to connect the
dots. Small worlds tell large tales. |
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