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Eyner Nahel calleyner120a — I purchased this book because I have been intrigued by San Miguel de Allende, a colonial city in Mexico dating from the 1600s where thousands of Norteamericanos (both American and Canadian artists and writers) live. Many of these gringos have established artists' colonies and workshops in San Miguel for people like myself for small snippets of time. Cohan, an established writer, and his wife, a painter, moved to San Miguel from Los Angeles in the mid-1980s when the gringo population was only about 2 percent. And San Miguel at the time was much smaller than it is today. (No strip malls.) In fact, the area didn't even have an international airport and when Cohan writes about the four-hour bus rides to the Mexico City airport, to some extent he is referencing a Mexico of the past: When the 80-year-old single political party system was crumbling, the era when the government owned many basic industries such as the national telephone company, and the peso was valued so low that hotel rooms in San Miguel cost the equivalent of $5 a night. The book's title is apt for Cohan's pacing... sloooow. Cohan describes his and his wife's cultural adjustments, their Mexican and gringo friends, and the purchase and renovation of a historic home. He also writes a lot about local food, flowers, music and religious customs and his wife's art -- which was heavily influenced by living in Mexico -- but he hardly describes any of his writing from the time and how Mexico shaped it. In addition to the slow pace, "On Mexican Time" lacks an interesting plot. This is intentional on Cohan's part. In the book Cohan criticizes writers such as Graham Greene who bounced in and out of Mexico and imprinted their cultural framework on their stories about fiestas, lawlessness and music. True, many of these writers may have been inadvertently racist or colonialist. But at least they were interesting. Cohan is not. I also was insulted by Cohan's assumption that readers like myself couldn't handle the truth. Readers -- especially ones who purchase a book with the title "San Miguel" -- are sophisticated enough to read between the lines. We can tell when an author may be biased. We can disagree with an author's interpretation of events. But most of the reason why I was so disappointed in the book was because I just couldn't relate to Cohan. I didn't find myself trusting him. He was a post-modern man living in very-much modern, 1980s Cold War Era Mexico. He complained about the American and Canadian tourists who were driving up prices and developing outside of town. Yet he also was an interloper. Sometimes I wondered whether he chose Mexico as a place to be entertained, especially since he seemed to spend so much time looking at shrines and churches, despite not being a believer.