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Gene McQuillan

Document Type

Review Essay

Abstract

[First paragraph]

One need not be a malicious critic to be curious about an insulting review. One day while browsing on-line for new travel books, I came across the following statement by Ian Sansom:

In his remarkable book The Art of Travel (1855) Charles Darwin's cousin Francis Galton noted that "In Napoleon's retreat, after his campaign in Russia, many a soldier saved or prolonged his life by creeping within the warm and reeking carcase of a horse that had died by the way." These days, Peter Carey does much the same with travel writing, snuggling up inside a rotting form for a little rest and relaxation in between writing Booker-winning novels. (1)

These two sentences immediately frame a few familiar issues that have remained a steady part of on-going debates about travel writing and its "literary" status. To begin, there's the almost obligatory contrast between today's travel books and those of the past. Sansom makes this tour a very brisk one, starting with the brief reference to an earlier "remarkable" book and then the quick allusions to Darwin, Galton, Napoleon, the Russian front. Sansom's argument is quite conventional; in essays such as Sally Tisdale's "Never Let the Locals See Your Map (Why Most Travel Writers Should Stay Home)," the nineteenth century is frequently projected as the golden age of travel and travel writing, as a time of incredible convergences. Great minds, open spaces to explore, new concepts, terrible conflicts: all of these contributed to the sense that one could write a book about the grand "Art" of travel with no sense of irony or hesitation. That generous mood lasts only until the second sentence of this review, in which we have already arrived at the present, when travel writers are working with "a rotting form". Of course, the more closely one reads this accusation, the less sense it makes: Napoleon's soldiers were acting out of desperation, while Peter Carey has the option of "rest and relaxation." Yet even if Sansom's analogy doesn't quite work, it still manages to suggest why some contemporary travel writers - and the scholars who study such writers - are suspicious about their own efforts. [1] Their awareness of a much more crowded and accessible world is compounded by the knowledge that travel writers must often settle for forms that are, if not rotting, then close to falling from exhaustion. After all, one needs to think carefully to list travel narratives that are not autobiographical, that are not chronological, that are not written as a form of mid-brow literary journalism. One could offer a lame defense against Sansom's accusation by pointing out that many other forms are seen as "rotting," and that one can easily find allegations about the impending death of print newspapers, Broadway musicals, TV sitcoms, and of course, the novel. I prefer to take a more challenging view, one that begins with a quick question - can you name a literary form which is not rotting, which seems ready to energize the lives of readers, writers, and perhaps even academics?

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