Granta 40. This item is unavailable.Granta 40

What is it about the Americans that they behave so badly when they go abroad?
In Richard Ford's 'The Womanizer', there is Martin Austin: a resident of the Chicago suburbs, a salesman and part-time coach of a little league baseball team, his briefcase full of expensive samples from the Lilienthal Paper Company of Winnetka, an insistently ordinary man, except in one crucial respect: he is capable of persuading anybody of anything (the womanizer's character defect).
Why does he act with such abandon once in Paris?
There is the young American novelist in Paul Theroux's 'imaginary' memoir (also named Paul, coincidentally): a man of good Protestant work habits and healthy family values. What is it about Lady Max - and the London she introduces to young Paul - that results in him losing his grip, his American self-control?
And finally there's William T. Vollman, alone in the wilderness with Erica. Is she really worth drowning for (even if she speaks eight languages)?