 
my plan was clear, concise, and reasonable, i think. 
for many years i have traveled in many parts of the world. 
in america i live in new york or dip into chicago or san[francisco. 
but new york is no more america than paris is france or london is 
england. 
thus i discovered that i did not know my own country. 
i, an american writer, writing about america, was working from memory, 
and the memory is at best a faulty, warpy reservoir. 
i had not heard the speech of america, smelled the grass and trees and 
sewage, seen its hills and water, its color and quality of light. 
i knew the changes only from books and newspapers. 
but more than this, i had not felt the country for twenty-five years. 
in short, i was writing of something i did not know about, and it seems to 
me that in a so-called writer this is criminal. 
my memories were distorted by twenty-five intervening years. 
once i traveled about in an old bakery wagon, a double-doored rattler with 
a mattress on its floor. 
i stopped where people stopped or gathered, i listened and looked and 
felt, and in the process had a picture of my country the accuracy of which was 
impaired only by my own shortcomings. 
so it was that i determined to look again, to try to rediscover this 
monster land. 
otherwise, in writing, i could not tell the small diagnostic truths which 
are the foundations of the larger truth. 
one sharp difficulty presented itself. 
in the intervening twenty-five years my name had become reasonably well 
known. 
