John Gimlette Quotes
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In both places [Paraguay and Newfoundland] people rise despite everything - both are pretty tough environments.
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I'll always love Paraguay. It's this most exotic place configured out of the imagination, the whole country.Paraguay will always be a special place in my heart. I go back a long way. I first arrived as a refugee in 1982 from the Falklands War. So it was a safe haven then, and it has become something exotic since then. I feel like I'd like the dust to settle a little bit before going back.
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I wouldn't like to see Cuba change in other ways. And the trouble is when Fidel [Castro] does go - I am sure he will at some stage. He will probably be replaced by some sort of Western capitalism, ultimately.
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There is a very big difference between American and British travel journalism, and that's this whole business of the assisted or freebie trip. In Britain we are unashamed about any travel company paying for you to go and then writing about it. That's the only way we can do it. But I have tried the same in the States, and I can't write for any sizeable American newspaper because they tell you to do it on this basis.
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I think one should express opinions and these books are relatively opinionated. They would be a bit dry without it.
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It is a gift, and you realize as soon as you cross the border into Paraguay, as I did, the first time in '82, that you are in a sort of wonderland. Nothing is quite right: the buildings, they've got their own architecture, their own language; and everything is just a little bit off key.
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I am always surprised when people do get upset. Perhaps its just the nutty people who write to newspapers who get upset.
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I wonder if this reason is partly geographical, that talk radio is so much more successful in North America than in Britain? People who are very remote - I'm thinking of Newfoundland - feel very connected though the radio.
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We don't really listen to what the other person is saying. We have gotten used to information being in such a concentrated form all the time, and so continuously, that conversation somehow seems inadequate for a lot of people, and therefore they can't join in it. You notice how many people can't argue anymore - without getting very upset.
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I have to be careful not to visit one place right after the other and write one book after the other. Because I fear writing the same book all over again. That's why I am taking a break and doing something different this time.
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My parents probably feel closer to the U.S. They feel America came to our rescue in the war and all that sort of thing. And for their generation the war still goes on. We still save food and little bits get scraped off and boiled out the next day.
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I have a nice little idea from some people I met there who are now in their seventies, and I want to tell their story about the revolution through the eyes of musicians, in fact. The '59 Revolution. And what has happened to them since. It's very much a Cuban story. They haven't fared too well.
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I often think I would like to come even closer to home and write about somewhere like Wales, for example - which we in England tend to be a little snooty about. That's where the coal comes from and that sort of thing.
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Buenos Aires is my favorite city. I think it's fantastic - but is a troubled, sort of psychologically troubled city.
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If you see our best seller list, most of them are books that are given as gifts. They are books you give to flatter somebody.
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The noise that we can expect in the future will only increase and we'll be wishing for rural Portugal or something like that.
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I don't want to sell other people trips! I want to be there!
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India, to some extent, courses through my blood. My father was brought up there, and my grandfather served there, and so on. We have a very strong family affinity for the place.
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American travel writing is very healthy. I'm always flicking through the reviews and I see plenty of travel writing - and an impressive line up and continual demand.
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I have dipped into Ian McEwan and so on. I tend not to stick with one writer. But I dip in here and there.
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My parents don't think about Europe at all. The Continent is somewhere else. And they call it the Continent - to reflect, they are no real part of it.
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I was writing the Paraguay book, a Paragauyan told me that only five thousand people in Paraguay read.
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When McDonald's opened up in Moscow - I happened to be there when it opened and wandered in. And the Russians were queuing three times around the block to get in. And when they got to the head of the queue, they'd go, "I'll have a Big Mac please. Have you the cheese and the rolls? And do you have the meat and do you have the salad?" And everybody asks this because they are so used to things being awful that it took them a quarter of an hour to order a Big Mac.
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I realize how much [Mark] Twain fabricated things. I like it very much, but it's only half true. And it shows what he was trying to do, which was just entertain. Which he does very successfully, though the humor is almost dated now.
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I am sure you have met diplomats; they probably travel far less than you do. Okay, they get to know a place very intensely - sometimes only the capitol city.
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I tend to prefer traveling in the Third World countries. Like Ethiopia. Or Eritrea.
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People my age and younger do think much more towards Europe. We have to fill the gap sometime - we can't think we are an empire any longer after all.
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I am no apologist for Fidel's [Castro] regime. It is, after all, a totalitarian regime. So I would like to see that change.
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There are 60 million of us [britains] crammed into an area the size of a state. So you don't have that feeling of remoteness at all, ever. And that's reflected in the way our media works, and so on.
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I find the public reaction to writing - it's fascinating in this modern age. Of course people are able to interact with me and email me, and I get quite a few I suppose.
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