Word: without
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...anachronism, most Swiss still highly regard (nearly) universal conscription. For many who have served, the militia is a school of life, and teaches invaluable lessons. One former soldier noted that Swiss middle-class men cannot rise in the corporate world without a good show in the army...
...Henry James wrote in The Italian Hours that of all the cities in the world, Venice is the easiest to visit without actually going there. Indeed, even if one has never set foot onto the sinking metropolis, it is hard not to have a pretty good idea of what it’s like: canals, gondolas, bridges, sleepy alleyways, crowded piazzas. The sights and images of Venice are everywhere in our own culture...
...This attitude is reminiscent of Czech writer Milan Kundera’s character Sabina in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, whose lover wants her to visit Palermo. He asks how she can possibly live without seeing it, to which Sabina responds, “I have seen Palermo. A friend of mine once sent me a postcard from there. It's taped up over the toilet...
...perhaps James is right. But there is another way in which it’s easier to go to Venice without actually going there, and this is because of people like James himself—because Venice has become a source of interest for those who produce and consume literature. Writers have become obsessed with the city, not simply as a setting for their narratives or to detail its wonders, but because they can use the city as a metaphor for issues of humanity, the arts, the past. These authors have not allowed the cheery, glossed-over tourist vision...
...while we often aim to visit other places through literature, it seems that, in this case, words and phrases might actually give us a truer experience of the city—allow us to move past the superficiality of the average tourist experience without, as James said, ever visiting...