Be skeptical travel writers who make grand generalizations

“One says in Mexico: one means, after all, one little town away South in the Republic: an in this little town, one rather crumbly adobe house built round two sides of a garden patio: and of this house, one spot on the deep shady veranda facing inwards to the trees, where there are on an onyx table and three rocking chairs and one little wooden chair, a pot with carnations, and a person with a pen. We talk so grandly, in capital letters, of Morning in Mexico. All it amounts to is one little individual looking at a bit of sky and trees, then looking down at the page of his exercise book. It is a pity we don’t always remember this. When books came out with grand titles, like The Future of America or The European Situation, it’s a pity we don’t immediately visualize a thin or fat person, in a chair or in a bed, dictating to a bob-haired stenographer or making little marks on paper with a fountain pen.”
–D.H. Lawrence, Mornings in Mexico (1927)