几个世纪以来，法国对旅行者施展了非凡的魅力。哈维·莱文斯坦（Harvey Levenstein）的迷人之旅解释了为什么这么多美国人去过那里，并以丰富多彩的细节讲述了他们到达那里时所做的事情。其结果是对美国人对法国食物、性和文化态度的转变进行了极具娱乐性的审查，并对阶级、性别、种族和民族观念的变化进行了引人入胜的探索。
莱文斯坦始于1786年，当时托马斯·杰斐逊（Thomas Jefferson）指示美国上流社会的年轻男性出国旅行是为了自我提升，而不是放荡。受这些情绪的启发，许多男性跨越大西洋，培养“品味”和优雅。然而，19世纪中叶跨大西洋轮船的出现，使法国向社会地位更低的人敞开了大门。随着上层阶级与下层旅行者的距离越来越远，寻求文化的旅游业让位给了“引人注目的休闲”、性和性感的旅游业。文化旅游被认为是社会地位上升的中上层女性。20世纪20年代，美国的禁酒令和一个新的中产阶级“寻欢作乐”，使得巴黎的醉酒狂欢比在卢浮宫跋涉更具诱惑力。法国反美主义的激烈爆发并没有动摇美国的理想，即一个充满生活乐趣的性感、乐天派的法国。它仍然是美国人最喜欢的海外目的地。
从弗拉戈纳尔到鹅肝酱，这本关于美国游客如何应对不断变化的休闲观念并开辟现代大众旅游之路的故事的精彩细节，令人愉悦、发人深省。
Seductive Journey: American Tourists in France from Jefferson to the Jazz Age
For centuries, France has cast an extraordinary spell on travelers. Harvey Levenstein’s Seductive Journey explains why so many Americans have visited it, and tells, in colorful detail, what they did when they got there. The result is a highly entertaining examination of the transformation of American attitudes toward French food, sex, and culture, as well as an absorbing exploration of changing notions of class, gender, race, and nationality.
Levenstein begins in 1786, when Thomas Jefferson instructed young upper-class American men to travel overseas for self-improvement rather than debauchery. Inspired by these sentiments, many men crossed the Atlantic to develop “taste” and refinement. However, the introduction of the transatlantic steamship in the mid-nineteenth century opened France to people further down the class ladder. As the upper class distanced themselves from the lower-class travelers, tourism in search of culture gave way to the tourism of “conspicuous leisure,” sex, and sensuality. Cultural tourism became identified with social-climbing upper-middle-class women. In the 1920s, prohibition in America and a new middle class intent on “having fun” helped make drunken sprees in Paris more enticing than trudging through the Louvre. Bitter outbursts of French anti-Americanism failed to jolt the American ideal of a sensual, happy-go-lucky France, full of joie de vivre. It remained Americans’ favorite overseas destination.
From Fragonard to foie gras, the delicious details of this story of how American visitors to France responded to changing notions of leisure and blazed the trail for modern mass tourism makes for delightful, thought-provoking reading.
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