NATIVE TONGUES
by Simon Winchester
The scene is a mysterious one, beguiling, thrilling, and, if you didn’t know better,
perhaps even a bit menacing. According to the
time-enhanced version of the story, it opens
on an afternoon in the late fall of 1965, when
without warning, a number of identical dark-
green vans suddenly appear and sweep out from
a parking lot in downtown Madison, Wiscon-
sin. One by one they drive swiftly out onto the
city streets. At ;rst they huddle together as a
convoy. It takes them only a scant few minutes
to reach the outskirts—Madison in the sixties
was not very big, a bureaucratic and academic
omnium-gatherum of a Midwestern city about
half the size of today. ;ere is then a brief halt,
some cursory consultation of maps, and the
cars begin to part ways.
Simon Winchester is the author of twenty-one books, including ;e Professor and the Madman, ;e
Meaning of Everything, Atlantic, and most recently ;e Alice Behind Wonderland. His last essay
for Lapham’s Quarterly appeared in the Summer 2009 issue, Travel.
