Every month, it seems, brings news of another paradise lost, and every year new Edens fall like palm trees before a hurricane--first Tahiti, then Bali, then Hawaii, Mykonos, Sri Lanka. The process is, in a sense, irresistible: after all, paradises cannot get better any more than children can grow purer. Each passing season (and each passing tourist) can only bring to the world's forgotten areas new developments--and in a never-never land, any development is a change for the worse. Elysium cannot be universally enjoyed until it has been discovered, and once it is discovered, it is lost.
Sometimes an Eden is brought down by the quite literal invasion of the real world, as even the most faraway places get placed in the sights of the superpowers. Tibet was stormed by the Chinese, and now the dreamed-of Shangri- La is vanished forever; Cambodia was caught in a cross fire, and an earthly paradise so gentle that ricksha drivers were said to tip their passengers is now a land of skulls; Afghanistan was overrun by Soviet tanks, and now a book of photographs remembering its fugitive beauties is subtitled, mournfully, Paradise Lost. In an age when airlines and satellites are rapidly turning the global village into the smallest of small worlds, no man can be an island. These days, not even an island can be an island.
Usually the spoiling of paradise comes more gently, and more gradually, at the hands of individuals. The trouble with paradise is that it is almost made to be lost: as fast as idyls seduce visitors, visitors reduce idyls. And as soon as a new last paradise has been found, so many people hurry to make claims on it that it becomes, almost instantly, a lost paradise. With crowds of strangers flocking together to escape the crowds, last year's lotus land becomes this year's tourist trap.
The mere presence of visitors, moreover, inevitably strips perfection of its most distinctive blessing: its innocence of self-consciousness. As soon as Eden is told that it is Eden, it becomes something else. These days every Arcadia is tempted to regard itself as a potential commodity, and paradise is less often lost than remaindered. The visitor to Nepal, which was long known as the Forbidden Land and closed to foreigners until as recently as 1951, can now stay comfortably at the Hotel Eden in Katmandu. Just around the corner, he can dine at the Paradise Restaurant or the Earth's Heaven Restaurant; after dinner, he can stroll to Nirvana Tours, the Hotel Shangri-La or a host of other 50 cents-a-night flophouses and cappuccino houses. There, the locals are sure to remind him that the real paradise is that great American city across the sea, rich with Cadillacs and videos and fast-food joints. By now, even New York, least otherworldly of cities, lists in its phone books 27 Edens, nine Arcadias and almost 100 Paradises (including the Paradise Memorial Pet Crematory and Paradise Guard Dogs, Inc.).