Although usually a transitory pleasure, this sensation can inspire life-changing action. From the cub reporters imagining themselves as the Woodward and Bernstein of All the President’s Men to the forensic science students inspired by CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, young people flock to careers made suddenly glamorous by dramas that highlight professions’ importance and downplay their tedium. For the novelist Yiyun Li, then a child in 1970s China, the glamour of American life emanated from a Western candy wrapper, the prize of her collection: “It was made of cellophane with transparent gold and silver stripes, and if you looked through it, you would see a gilded world, much fancier than our everyday, dull life.” The wrapper, she wrote in 2005, “was the seed of a dream that came true: I left China for an American graduate school in 1996 and have lived here since.”
