Broad Brushes and Sticky Enthusiasm
Groan, groan. If I had a buck for each tired reference to cornfed Midwestern
virtue in the Chicago books, I'd buy us a retro-chic jaunt to Niagara
Falls.
But how would you write an introduction to such a vast topic for such
a vast readership? Because of English's universality--and the prohibitively
high cost of printing books in one-country languages such as Danish and
Hebrew--these guides are used by folks of every imaginable age and nationality.
They have to appeal to Swedish grandmothers, Indonesian teenagers, and tourists
from the hinterlands of New Jersey. I bet the specialized guides--the ones for
children, vegetarians, gays, Jews, runners, ethnic food buffs, and so on--are
better-written, because they don't have to cast such ridiculously wide nets
over subject and audience.
What really irks me about the writing is its relentlessly upbeat tone. My
books coat every museum, park, and hotel with a sticky layer of enthusiasm,
making the entire city uniformly and unrecognizably wonderful. Flipping through
my seven guidebooks, I found not a single negative restaurant review. I just
can't trust anyone who's this nice.
And I shouldn't: Michael Jordan's Restaurant, which screams "tourist trap!"
so loudly that it should be carrying a camera, gets rave reviews. Fodor's
recommends its "high-quality" steaks and touts Michael's "rather frequent
appearances," and Frommer's calls the food "surprisingly good." But the Chicago
edition of the Zagat's guides--which, unlike any of the guidebooks we're
covering, relies on actual reader feedback--gives the restaurant a
stomach-turning food rating of 13 (out of a possible 30) and laughs that it
"might be deserted if it 'were named for anyone else.' "
Which brings us to a dirty industry secret: Guidebook writers, unlike travel
journalists, are allowed to accept free meals and lodging. Actually, since
their publishing houses generally don't provide food and hotel costs, they must
rely on complimentary dinners and stays, which means that they notify the
establishment ahead of time that they're coming to write a review. Can you
imagine the succulent steak, the impeccable service, the free pair of Air
Jordans to which the Fodor's writer was probably treated at Michael Jordan's?
Even Lonely Planet, the least fawning of my books, coughs that its "writers do
not accept discounts or payments in exchange for positive coverage." Ah, so
they can't auction off good reviews to the highest bidder! But writers can
still accept said discounts, no?
Discounts or no, Lonely Planet is proving to be my most trusted guide. This
surprised me; generally, I'm a big believer in matching the guidebook to the
destination, and I probably would have chosen Lonely Planet to wander real
jungles instead of urban ones. But the book is far more practical than any
other, dishing out such goodies as city bus routes, the best food stands at
Midway airport, names and programs of favorite local radio personalities, and
even the phone number of an notoriously aggressive car-towing agency. It's the
one book to provide more than a quick mention of the riots at the 1968
Democratic Convention, or to explain how redlining segregated the city by race.
Lonely Planet is also the only guide with a discernible sense of humor. (On
snowstorm cleanup, it comments, "Any Chicago politician can tell you that snow
is a substance sent by God to ruin political careers, and because of that, each
and every delicate little flake that falls on the city is seen as an invader to
be eradicated, whatever the cost.")
The guidebook-to-destination theory is why I was so harsh yesterday on
Frommer's shoddy survey of Chicago architecture (and for the record, it's a
difference of 10 pages, not five, and 10 times the amount of detail).
Architecture is arguably Chicago's greatest offering, both to tourists and to
American life in general. This city has pioneered two landscape-alterating
methods of construction (the balloon frame and the skyscraper), fostered two
distinct schools of design, and nurtured talents such as Frank Lloyd Wright and
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. I agree that true pilgrims will purchase an
architecture-specific guide. But by failing to devote much extra copy or care
to the subject, Frommer's demonstated that it churns out guidebooks according
to a set formula, regardless of what is unique about its subject destinations.
Travel is all about distinctiveness, but I bet that the table of contents for
the Chicago book is depressingly identical to that of the Philadelphia and
Toronto guides.
I second your call for New Yorkers to appreciate our tourists (not to
mention the riches they bring the city). Of course, we are defending ourselves
here, since Americans are generally considered to be the most obnoxious
visitors on earth. I like the theory espoused in the 1960s by the British
essayist Clive James. He said that American tourists weren't actually any ruder
or cruder than those from other countries. Rather, it's that international
travel used to be a luxury reserved for the rich and ultra-mannered, and ours
was the first nation wealthy enough to export our middle class.
Now the middle class has been traveling for decades. Air travel is an
everyday activity, entire cable channels are devoted to travel, and we buy
enough guidebooks to support ever-deepening niche titles. Doesn't this suggest
that tourists are simply getting better at going places, and that it's time to
dispense with the stereotype that tourists are uncouth, unchic, and generally
unbearable?
