What emerges when we look beyond the often self-assured cosmopolitan circulation of Americans abroad such as Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, and James McNeill Whistler, is a larger identity construction that frequently performed cultural innocence. American artists, writers, and travelers sought to turn the liability of lacking a culture and tradition into the asset of allowing for unencumbered experience and being unaffected by the weight of history. In turn, notions of cultural innocence and belatedness that appear in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Franco-American exchange have resonances into the twentieth century, and even into the contemporary moment.

Who me, listen to audio books? That was my attitude until recently, a prejudice of my profession that literature is better read than heard. But on a solo road trip this summer I took along the ten-disk set of Marc Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for the ride.

Many travelers still seek solitude among the tourists, the luxury to communicate personally with the ruins. They long to leave their minds on idle, while they enter the vista before them, undisturbed by the other souls striving for the same illusion. I often feel this contradiction of being alone with others when I travel.

How can you use the market place to predict future classics?  How could you even bet on the literary future?  EBay has found a way -- a really interesting one.  The futures markets tell us that Darren Shan (author of the young adult series Cirque du Freak) is more than twice as valuable as of today than New Yorker darling David Mitchell.  But Ken Follett is a cut above that.How do I know?