How Did You Come Back From China and Talk to People in America?

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After a period away where you were an outsider did you feel like an outsider coming back and talking to people in America how did it change your relationship to these places that you had been before. I think part of it was having moved to Washington which is as exotic a destination as any reporting assignmentlike talk about a subculture. Going from one place to the next kept my instruments sharp I would see things that I hadn't seen before and I would notice change over time, he says.

Evan Osnos is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His new book is Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury.

“I'm always trying to get inside a subculture. That's the thing that I think has been the most enduring, attractive element for me. Is there a world that has its own manners and vocabulary and internal rhythms and status structure? And who looks down on whom? And why? And who venerates whom? Who's a big deal in these worlds? And if I can get into that, it doesn't even really matter to me that much what the subculture is. I'm fascinated by trying to map that thing out.”

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