A Meatball at Sea
For the May 2024 issue, Gary Shteyngart spent seven nights aboard the biggest cruise ship that has ever sailed.
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I’ve never written a letter to the editor before, but rare are the times I’ve read an article more hilarious, brilliant, and incisive than Gary Shteyngart’s on his escapades at sea. I was moved, entertained, and wowed by his keen observations. But mostly I’m grateful to him for reinforcing a promise I made to myself: I will never, ever go on a cruise.
Jennifer Ripley
Menlo Park, Calif.
I laughed out loud several times while reading Gary Shteyngart’s account of his experience on the inaugural voyage of the Icon of the Seas. As someone passionate about cruising, I recognized the truth in much of what Shteyngart wrote. I’m also a travel agent, and the thought of sailing on the Icon fills me with dread. So many people! I tell my clients that cruising is for everyone, but not all cruise lines are for everyone.
There are a few aspects of cruising that I think the author missed, though. My son is a full-time wheelchair user and an avid cruiser. It’s hard to imagine how he would see the world if not on a cruise ship. On today’s modern, accessible vessels, the indignities that he and other people with disabilities might suffer every day at home are largely absent.
We love cruising because of the staff. The pride and care that crew members take in providing excellent service is evident. We love to ask about their family at home, and we tip them generously. We hope that Shteyngart did the same.
Kathleen Moylan
Worcester, Mass.
Once upon a time, I was a travel writer. As someone who still revels in the wonder of travel 15 years after leaving the field, I found Gary Shteyngart’s article about the Icon of the Seas disappointing. Travel writing as an artistic form has been in jeopardy for years, and I fear that articles like Shteyngart’s demonstrate why.
Travel writing doesn’t have to follow well-worn formats or cast its subjects in a favorable light. But it should create a sense of place. No travel writer worth their salt would ever wallow in misery and disdain, as Shteyngart does here. A travel writer shouldn’t judge those around them or put themselves at the center of the story; the job of a travel writer is to look at an experience and see its value. When I worked as a travel writer, if I ever found myself in an experience I disliked, I tried to understand why others around me enjoyed it and then worked to reconcile those two perspectives.
We travel writers are a specific brood. We have internalized that our work is not about us. We know we are guests in the places we visit. There is a degree of respect that a travel writer must have if they hope to see a place clearly. Those have to be table stakes.
Kim Palacios
San Ramon, Calif.
It is disconcerting that, only four months after The Atlantic devoted an entire issue to the dangers of a second Donald Trump presidency, the magazine published a story that seems designed to confirm the central argument of Trump’s political movement: that blue-state elites despise ordinary Americans and see no value in their way of life. Like Trump’s speeches, Gary Shteyngart’s humor is littered with name-calling and childish insults; the “reprobates” and “bent psychos” who spend their money on cruises are mocked for their weight, their clothes, their hobbies, their tattoos. Despite the fact that some of these “psychos” are, as Shteyngart notes, veterans who have served their country, he concludes that his fellow cruisers have no “interior life” and are thus unworthy of attention from a member of the “creative class” like himself. If Trump is reelected in November, part of the blame will lie with those, like Shteyngart, who seem to have retreated so far into their progressive bubbles that they have become the mirror image of the MAGA faithful.
Andrew Miller
New Orleans, La.
Gary Shteyngart’s colorful essay from the world’s largest cruise ship makes snobbery an art form. What did he expect? Cruise-ship builders take chunks of Las Vegas, Branson, and Disney and put them on a platform that moves through the water. Never have I entertained the idea of taking a trip on one, but thousands of Americans do it regularly, most of them solidly middle-class in wealth and taste. Most Americans would prefer to watch the Mets play the Marlins than the Met play Mozart.
During my cruising years—on the Navy’s big gray ships, in the 1960s—officers and crews were a mix of Americans from everywhere and every social strata. One chief petty officer was an outspoken socialist; one of my commanding officers was a paranoid member of the John Birch Society. The crews of the ships I served on joined the middle class upon discharge, and some of them probably cruise and talk football and eat bad food and vote for Donald Trump. What a shame that Shteyngart couldn’t connect with them. He might have learned something. I did.
Earl Higgins
River Ridge, La.
Gary Shteyngart replies:
What fascinated me most about my fellow cruisers—many of whom were from blue states and were not MAGA diehards—was their lack of curiosity. They were more than happy to eat food that reminded me of a Yalta cafeteria in my Soviet youth. They laughed themselves silly when a comedian made fun of “shithole countries” (although the African woman and her husband next to me walked out). To Andrew Miller’s point, I think it is precisely this kind of passivity and incuriosity that lets a nation forgo its long tradition of democracy and, through either malice or inaction, allow a tyrant to take charge. To Earl Higgins’s comment, I tried to connect desperately, almost pathologically, with my fellow cruisers. Sadly, there was not one outspoken socialist or paranoid member of the John Birch Society to be found. Indeed, it was the blinkered blandness of my fellow cruisers that drove me to despair. In the end, I began to respect the alcoholics and degenerate gamblers I met. They, at least, had a story to tell.
A Study in Senate Cowardice
Republicans like Rob Portman could have ended Donald Trump’s political career, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in The Atlantic’s May 2024 issue. They chose not to.
Good journalism should make its audience angry. And Jeffrey Goldberg’s detailing of the rank hypocrisy of the Republican senators who talked tough but folded like cheap suits when it came time to vote to convict Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 insurrection should incite anger in every reader who cares about this country.
Particularly fitting is Goldberg’s word choice about their behavior—pathetic, greasy. I hope history remembers and repeats the names of those senators who could have stopped a threat to democracy and decency but instead caved to Trump.
Steve Schild
Winona, Minn.
Jeffrey Goldberg’s article holding certain Republican senators to account makes a valid point. However, it is easy to picture the current GOP leadership retaliating with baseless impeachment proceedings against their opposition, setting a destructive precedent that could undermine and diminish the United States. Goldberg calls that argument “pathetic,” but probably some of those senators who voted nay believed Trumpism would eventually pass; they followed the rule of law and looked ahead hopefully to a future generation of quality leaders for whom the nation would matter more than any individual.
Michael E. Zuller
Great Neck, N.Y.
Behind the Cover
In this issue’s cover story, “The Valley,” George Packer reports from Phoenix and the surrounding Salt River Valley. Packer argues that the Valley’s problems—climate change, conspiracism, hyper-partisanship—are America’s, and that its fate may presage the nation’s. The cover evokes a landscape that is getting hotter and drier, and a future that is blurry. This is a place where American optimism and ingenuity are being put to the test.
— Peter Mendelsund, Creative Director
Corrections
“Democracy Is Losing the Propaganda War” (June) misstated the subtitle of Anne Applebaum’s latest book. The full title is Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. “The Great Serengeti Land Grab” (May) misstated the distance between Sharjah Safari park and the Pololeti Game Reserve. The Sharjah Safari park is 2,000 miles northeast of the Pololeti Game Reserve, not 5,000 miles north. “Clash of the Patriarchs” (May) mischaracterized Roman Emperor Constantine’s policy toward Christianity. Although Constantine favored Christianity over other tolerated religions in the empire, he did not impose it on his subjects.
This article appears in the July/August 2024 print edition with the headline “The Commons.”
