Journeys abroad require a passport.
Once an optional privilege which could be enjoyed by important people, the passport has become a compulsory nuisance.
But itis more than that - it is ‘demeaning and shame-making’, particularly so since it has to be furnished with a photograph of the bearer.
Here, in fact, is ‘an example of something tiny which has powerfully affected the modern sensibility’.
Conducing to ‘anxious self-awareness’ and ‘secret but overriding self-contempt’.
And ‘it would be depressing to estimate the amount of uniquely modern anxiety experienced by the traveller returning to his own country when the passport officer slowly leafs through his book of supects , a moments pause he looks at his list, he looks at you.
OK you can go through.
Once an optional privilege which could be enjoyed by important people, the passport has become a compulsory nuisance.
But itis more than that - it is ‘demeaning and shame-making’, particularly so since it has to be furnished with a photograph of the bearer.
Here, in fact, is ‘an example of something tiny which has powerfully affected the modern sensibility’.
Conducing to ‘anxious self-awareness’ and ‘secret but overriding self-contempt’.
And ‘it would be depressing to estimate the amount of uniquely modern anxiety experienced by the traveller returning to his own country when the passport officer slowly leafs through his book of supects , a moments pause he looks at his list, he looks at you.
OK you can go through.
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