The December issue of Conde Nast Traveler is devoted to luxury. I know, I too thought every issue was devoted to luxury. (This is National Critique Travel Publications Week.)
A number of people - writers, designers, restaurateurs, TV personalities - tell what luxury means to them. Paul Theroux is not among them. "Luxury," he writes in Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, "is the enemy of observation, a costly indulgence that induces such a good feeling that you notice nothing. Luxury spoils and infantilizes you and prevents you from knowing the world."
Joan Juliet Buck notes "the presence of books." Frederick Vreeland suggests enthusiastic and expert guides. Matt Lauer, not surprisingly, says lack of surprise.
Pico Iyer, characteristically sane and against the grain, writes: "simplicity," echoing, in his own unabrasive way, Theroux. Patrick Symmes claims that the highest luxury is "the kind that follows traveling in hardship."
No one said: speaking the language of the country you're in. Being able to understand, and to be understood, is to me the greatest luxury. But that takes work, and time, and a willingness to be embarrassed. And in the world of five-star hotels and sumptuous spas and celebrity chefs - Conde Nastland - everybody speaks English anyway.
