An Exercise in Eloquent Reportage

…The truth is I have always been suspicious of travel writing, of attempts to establish that elusive element that might or might not be national character, to say in sweeping and general terms, this place is like this, that place is like that.  One always thinks: But I’ve met French people who weren’t at all droll.  Or, But I’ve been there and didn’t find it at all romantic/squalid/interesting.  Or worse still: How long has this author been there, anyway?  Two months, three? How can he possibly know anything deep about the place? How can he tell us about anything more than the casual phenomena any traveler would notice, conversations in bars and things only half understood on the street.  At which point it all becomes no more than an exercise in eloquent reportage…

~ Tim Parks, An Italian Education: The Further Adventures of an Expatriate in Verona, 1995