Essays on Travel (with references)

1. WRITE A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS/CRITICAL REVIEW OF 4 TRAVEL WRITING ARTICLES

Produce an essay which examines the strategies employed by the author in the work to engage the reader, and make some critical judgements about the effectiveness of these strategies. Consider what the author is doing in terms of narrative structure, voice, characterization etc..

The four articles considered in this encompass a broad range of travel writing – from thematic to destination specific to poetry on the subject of travel to an historical journey narrative. Using characterisations, rich imagery, evocative descriptions, anecdotes, historical information, dialogue, plotting and stylistic devices they are all considered travel writing because they all attain and maintain a verisimilitude and/or a commitment to empirical facts. Concomitantly themes and issues such as friendship, relationships, memories, growth, learning, experiences, time, change, permanence, self-expression and/or indulgence, ennui, futility, vanity, mystery, perplexity, modesty are introduced, used and/or developed and presented. As privileged subjects assuming and being given the power to write in very unequal class, ethnicity, gender and national socio-economic-cultural formations and processes all of these writers are inherently somewhat ‘Orientalist’[1] and class-biased, as are most of their readers. Two of the writers, however, are women and all are quite intelligent, sensitive and self-aware individuals experiencing and thinking and writing relatively unprejudicedly. None, however, are even aware of what the possible class, gender, ethnicity, nationality, creed and personal ramifications of the refreshingly clear thought that ‘there is no foreign land; it is only the traveller that is foreign’[2] would be – let alone are concerned by them.

Introducing with a personal anecdote the first person narrator in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ‘Watching the Rain in Galicia’[3] embarks on a destination specific narrative about Galicia – ‘one of my dreams: a visit to Galicia’. Continuing in the personal the narrator courses Galician cuisine to memories of his grandmother, home ghosts and memories, ham, a trip to Barcelona, and his ancestry among ‘the frenetic greens of May, the sea and the fertile rains and eternal winds of the Galician countryside’. Noting that ‘when I visit a place and haven’t enough time to get to know it more than superficially, I unashamedly assume my role as tourist’ the narrator evocatively describes the square in Santiago de Compostela. The rain and weather frames mentions of Galician friends, the character and poets of the Galicians, the city, fields, estuaries and bridges leading into another personal anecdote about a meal on the island of La Toja ‘where there’s a hotel from another world and time, which seems to be waiting for the rain to stop’ eating shellfish, fish and ‘salads that continued to grow on the table’. The narrator concludes with another mention of a writer, the character of Galicians, and his grandmother.

Using these images, strategies and anecdotes the narrator skilfully, interestingly and poetically weaves an engaging and evocative article. Scenes are framed and set and using sensitively and apposite observations, memories, feelings, sights and thoughts we are presented with a resonant, interesting and atmospheric ‘Galicia’. The personal anecdotes provide both interest and humour in themselves and successful introduction, framing and bridging mechanisms.

The article ‘Why Venice Is Too Much And Trieste Is Not Enough’ by Wyn Wheldon is part of a thematic series ‘Muses on Bella Italia’[4]. Using the tropes ‘too much’ and ‘not enough’ the narrator gives us a few brief impressions, views and experiences of Venice and Trieste, juxtaposing one against the other. Impressionistically and ‘humorously’ the scene in Venice is set by saying ‘there is too much flesh’ which apparently is inappropriate except on the inevitable ‘bargeman’. Then after mentioning the Grand Canal, Piazza San Marco and the Rialto the narrator gives us some details of architecture and the colours of the town before reminding us of the presence there of the art of Titian, Bellini and Tintoretto giving us in a few brief sentences a reminder of the richness and history of Venice. All done in a breezy and somewhat jaded way – is it the narrator or Venice? Beginning ‘Trieste is not enough’ it is described as a town surrounded by a ‘ring of mountains that creates the half bowl at the bottom of which the city floats’, unlike Venice not Renaissance but Eighteenth Century Habsburg. Cafés, cakes, chocolates and an ongoing, in November, chocolate festival are then mentioned. Moving into the narrator’s and partner’s humorous experience of their booked hotel’s dilapidation and inefficiency we learn that the town is fully booked with a Conference and the taxi looking for a new hotel cost 90E. ‘The following morning’ their new hotel overlooks the main square described by Jan Morris, the narrator tells us, as the ‘whale heart of the city’ - introducing some ‘appropriate’ ‘literary’ flavour. Further mentioning that ‘to we literary souls, Trieste means James Joyce and Rainer Maria Rilke and Stendhal’ the narrator finds the ‘modern city…curiously uncharismatic’. And so concluding ‘And that pretty much was that…’.

The impressionistic anecdotes and imagery used are quite effective in giving us a couple of flavours and impressions of the two towns evocatively and quite interestingly. The juxtaposing stylistic device is an effective ‘hook’ but somewhat meretricious. ‘Art’, richness and ‘literature’ are also quite effective stylistic devices setting the tone of the piece regardless of their substantive inclusion in the piece or not. Thematically the piece includes self-expression, ennui, mundaneness, desire and aspiration.

‘Crossing the Alps, November 1739’[5] in the first person singular and plural recounts an eight day ‘tiresome’ journey across the European Alps. Using evocative and concise imagery and descriptions we learn of the first three days travel being on the usual road to Geneva, the fourth and fifth days ‘among rather than upon the Alps, through a deep valley, among vast quantities of rocks’, and, although ‘the winter was so far advanced…there was still somewhat fine remaining among the savageness and horror of the place.’. On the sixth day we are told of the narrator and ‘Mr Walpole’ travelling on ‘a very rough road, not two yards broad’ and Mr Walpole allowing his dog to run alongside his horse and it being snatched by a wolf ‘in less than a quarter of a minute’ that - had it upset the horses instead ‘all must have inevitably tumbled above 50 fathoms perpendicular down the precipice.’. The next day the carriage was dissembled and put on mules, and the travellers seated ‘on a sort of matted chair’ were carried up and over Mt Cenis by very nimble and swift carriers ‘in places where none but they could go three paces without falling.’. ‘The immensity of the precipices, the roaring of the rivers and torrents that run into it, the huge crags covered with ice and snow, and the clouds below you and about you, are objects it is impossible to conceive without seeing them.’. Down into Piedmont then to La Ferriere, ‘a small village…still among the clouds where we began to hear a new language spoken around about us.’. Then on the eighth day ‘through a fine avenue of nine miles in length, as straight as a line’ they arrived at Turin where ‘Mr Gray’ begins his journey narrative ‘I am this night arrived here…’

This stylistic device of the narrator recounting his journey newly arrived at his destination is a very effective and efficient plotting strategy and an effective ‘hook’ – we can see and feel his tiredness and the ardour of the journey, and the vividness and freshness of his descriptions and evocations, as he ‘recounts’ it. Then ‘along the way’ the narrator gives us information, evocative and concise descriptions, and introduces us to another character, ‘Mr Walpole’, as he tells us about the wolf and perilous, scenic route. Anecdotal information such as wolves on the path, servants too slow to draw pistols, and carriers and biers in Europe provides additional interest.

‘Questions of Travel’[6] by Elizabeth Bishop is a somewhat philosophical poem about travel simultaneously questioning its rationales, uses and value and evoking in a series of fun, colourful, sensitive and mentally stimulating images its experiences, sights, sounds and joys. Using a first person plural narrator – an inclusive, generalising ‘we’ - in a structure of three stanzas and a coda the narrator introduces by humorously confiding ‘there are too many waterfalls here’ following up with concrete and sensual images of clouds spilling over the sides of mountains, tearstains turning to waterfalls…now or in an age or so, and mountains ‘like the hulls of captured ships, slime-hung and barnacled’. The next stanza again begins humorously, confidingly and inclusively asking us to ‘think of the long trip home’ and going on to mention ‘the tiniest green hummingbird in the world’, ‘one more folded sunset’ and asking ‘What childishness is it that while there’s breath of life in our bodies, we are determined to rush to see the sun the other way around?’ Again evocatively, sensitively and mentally stimulatingly the next stanza ripostes - ‘it would have been a pity not to have seen the trees along this road…gesturing like noble pantomimists, robed in pink…and heard the sad, two-noted, wooden tune of disparate wooden clogs carelessly clacking…’, and a birdcage is then described as a baroque church and it’s asked ‘what connection can exist for centuries between footwear…and wooden cages?’.

At the end of that third stanza the narrator describes ‘the traveller’ as taking a notebook and pensively writing the coda – which – as part of its ‘philosophising’ - includes the dismal and jaded mention that ‘Continent, city, country, society: the choice is never wide and never free’ and the questions ‘Is it lack of imagination that makes us come to imagined places, not just stay at home?’ and ‘Should we have stayed at home, wherever that may be?’. Thus ending the poem. ‘Is it right to be watching strangers in a play in this strangest of theatres?’ the narrator asks in stanza two - in this poem we can enjoyably watch, listen to, feel and think with the narrator and ‘the traveller’ about the pleasures, experiences, humour, drollery and mentally stimulating aspects of travel. Regarding the questioning of the rationales and value of travel the narrator asks, again somewhat humorously - ‘Oh must we dream our dreams and have them, too?’ and on the basis of the ideas, images, scenes, feelings and questions evoked in this poem the narrator’s and - again with the rhetorical, inclusive ‘we’ – our answer has to be yes.

Encompassing such a broad range of styles, utilising the whole range of techniques and colours of any writing, and broaching, addressing and developing a wide and deep range of themes and issues, whilst maintaining a verisimilitude and/or a commitment to empirical facts travel writing is not just a ‘new continent’[7] but an open sky and new world of creativity and endeavour. As such diversity, intelligence, sensitivity, diligence, uniqueness as well as surprise, alienation, provocativeness, novelty and challenge etc. will always be germaine to writers, readers and ‘destinations’ in all meanings of the words. These four pieces are a pleasant reminder and indication of that.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Buford B., (ed.), The Best of Granta Travel, Granta, London, 1991

An anthology of travel writing including Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ‘Watching the Rain in Galicia’ discussed above. A good selection of destination specific, journey, personal, thematic, travel feature and other types of travel writing incorporating a wide range of styles and elements of style. Mostly from the 1980’s some seem quite dated in both psychological and cultural terms. Quite deficient in writing by non-Europeans and Americans.

Carey, John (ed.), The Faber Book of Reportage, Faber and Faber, London, 1987

A very interesting anthology of mostly European ‘Reportage’ from ancient to recent times including the travel piece discussed above ‘Crossing the Alps, November 1739’. ‘Reportage’ in this anthology includes travel, history, journalism, magazine, diary and letter pieces and excerpts. Well selected and edited its only deficiency is the lack of reportage by non-Europeans.

Craig P., (ed.) The Oxford Book of Travel Stories, OUP, Oxford, 1996

An anthology of travel writing including Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Questions of Travel’ discussed above. A good selection of destination specific, journey, personal, thematic, travel feature and other types of travel writing incorporating a wide range of styles and elements of style. Incorporating writing from a wider selection of periods than the Granta anthology this book also has quite a deficiency in writing by non-Europeans and Americans.

Hulme P. & Youngs T. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, CUP, Cambridge, 2002

An excellent book describing the formation of the genre ‘travel writing’ articulating its definition, periods and styles. It also covers travel writings on particular places and regions considering their perspectives, emphases, styles, biases and the main themes discovered in these mostly European travel writings. The issues these raise and their interdisciplinary meanings are also examined. It is deficient, once again, in considering non-European travel writings, although this is conscious as Section One is solely concerned with the formation of the genre in writing in English.

Said, E., Orientalism, Penguin, London, 2003

This book articulates and analyses the formation of the network of institutions, imagery, discourses, scholarship and companies dealing with the ‘Orient’ from ‘Western’ perspectives and interests. Considered ground-breaking on publication it has been utilised in much subsequent social and political thinking, along with Foucault, to articulate and analyse other socio-economic formations and processes besides ‘ethnicity’ along gender, class, creed, national, intellectual/imaginary lines. The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing is one example one of many such. Very pertinent for travel writers and readers.

Stein S., Stein on Writing, St Martin’s Press, New York, 1995

Mentioning and explaining such oft-neglected things as conflict, suspense, change through time and other ways of setting scenes, plotting and characterisation the chapters ‘Using the Techniques of Fiction to Enhance Nonfiction’ and ‘Conflict, Suspense and Tension in Nonfiction’ are useful articulations and explanations of these and other elements of style used by fiction writers that are useful for travel writers.

Swick T., ‘Roads not Taken’ in Columbia Journalism Review, Vol. 40 no. 1, May-June, 2001, pp65-67

Written by a newspaper travel section editor this article also encourages travel writers to use fiction writers’ techniques in their writings. Also briefly describing some tendencies and changes in newspaper travel writing sections this article introduces writers and students to broader ideas and themes that can be useful.

WEBSITES

www.hackwriters.com, HackWriters: The International Writer’s Magazine, 2010

A large website presenting an interesting and well organised collection of mostly amateur travel, lifestyle, political and social commentary, reviews and fiction writing. The large travel section has both individual travel writing pieces and thematic groups of travel writing such as the one considered here ‘Muses on Bella Italia’. The travel section is divided into geographic sections, and the writing comes from a range of places all over the world. The website also includes reviews of travel books and writing.

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[1] Said, E., Orientalism, Penguin, London, 2003

[2] Robert Louis Stevenson in Hulme P. & Youngs T. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, CUP, Cambridge, 2002, p1

[3] Gabriel Garcia Marquez, ‘Watching the Rain in Galicia’ in B. Buford (ed.) The Best of Granta Travel, Granta, London, 1991, pp2-5

[4] Wyn Wheldon ‘Why Venice It Too Much And Trieste Is Not Enough’, http://www.hackwriters.com/toomuch.htm
on www.hackwriters.com HackWriters: The International Writer’s Magazine: Muses on Bella Italia, viewed 22/6/10

[5] Thomas Gray, ‘Crossing the Alps, November 1739’ in Carey, John (ed.), The Faber Book of Reportage, Faber and Faber, London, 1987

[6] Elizabeth Bishop, ‘Questions of Travel’ in P. Craig (ed.) The Oxford Book of Travel Stories, OUP, Oxford, 1996, pp433-434

[7] Francis Bacon in Hulme P. & Youngs T. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, CUP, Cambridge, 2002, p4