On the fifth day of travel across the Atlantic Ocean, we saw the gigantic buildings of New York. America was before us. But when...
On the fifth day of travel across the Atlantic Ocean, we saw the gigantic buildings of New York. America was before us. But when we had been in New York for a week and had begun, as we thought, to understand America, we were suddenly and unexpectedly told that New York isn’t America at all.
Then we went to Washington, being firmly convinced that the capital of the United States would, undoubtedly, be America. We spent a day there and by evening we had fallen in love with that purely American city. However, that very evening we were told that on no account could Washington be considered America. we were told that it is the city of government clerks, while America is something completely different.
Bewildered, we went to Hartford, a city in the state of Connecticut, where the great American writer Mark Twain spent his mature years. Much to our horror, the locals announced in unison that Hartford isn’t exactly the real America either. They couldn’t say for certain where the actual America is located. Some said that the real America is the southern states, while others maintained that it is the western ones. A few didn’t say anything at all–they just pointed their fingers vaguely into space.
Ilya Ilf and Yevgeniy Petrov, Soviet satire writers, 1936 (via qichi)
(via heavilyarmedvirtue)