Theroux's Great Railway Bazaar

In the 1970's Paul Theroux spent four months on an out-and-back railway journey across Asia from London. Then he published a book about it. The Great Railway Bazaar was fantastic and of course now I want to take an epic train journey too.

Accompanying map from The Great Railway Bazaar (1975)

Theroux's humorous, beautiful descriptions and the characters he meets along the way held my attention across the continent. I empathized with his impatience towards certain passengers, although honestly sometimes he came across as an asshole. I learned that Sri Lanka used to be called Ceylon and that Gokteik Viaduct in Myanmar was built by Pennsylvania Steel in 1900. Theroux's travel fatigue by the end of the book was spot-on and hilarious. Major parts of the book are "so 70's" (hippies, Vietnam) and I'm looking forward to reading the companion sequel, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, where he retraces his itinerary in 2008.

The only thing that gave me a sour-lemon-face about this book was the Western white male perspective and barely disguised sense of superiority, not unlike another famous book about taking an exotic journey in order to write about it (ahem, Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert). For comparison and contrast, I submit The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen.

In an excellent Boston Review piece, Jessa Crispin argues that today's travel writer "sells not only lovely prose and insights into a new land but also the lifestyle of the rootless and adventurous ... If your life is an aspiration, you are a beacon, not a human, and you talk rather than listen." For women travel writers, "the focus of attention is the self" compared to the prototypical male writer who is an "expert witness who explains the native." See also this LA Review of Books piece regarding travel writing as memoir.  The issue with travel writing as memoir is the writer assumes they are "the most interesting person in the room." Crispin argues that rather than explain or self-reflect, the travel writer should first engage and listen by passing the metaphorical microphone.

If I were to lay Crispin's gender comparison out on some sort of travel writer scale, where one end is Elizabeth Gilbert and Cheryl Strayed (female, internal) and the other end is Paul Theroux and British colonialists (male, external), in the middle I would put Matthiessen. The Snow Leopard manages to be equal parts spiritual and physical journey; the reader sees the beauty of Tibetan mountains and the grief of Matthiessen. As an added bonus, the native characters exist beyond caricatures and are integral to the story; the microphone is partially passed.

Crispin's "lifestyle of the rootless and adventurous" is crystallized in the opening of Bazaar: "That [head]cold made leaving all the easier; leaving was a cure: 'Have you tried aspirin?' 'No, I think I'll got to India'" (p.15). Four months later and Theroux's final train ride through Russia is fraught with psychological travel fatigue, followed by missing a Christmas flight home: "Fiction is pure joy -- how sad that I could not reinvent the trip as fiction" (p. 379). I was about to argue that Theroux doesn't really present his story as aspirational, but then I recalled this quote: "All travel is circular ... the grand tour is just the inspired man's way of heading home" (p. 379). In conclusion, here is inspired man Paul Theroux's Instagram account.

Bottom line: Admire the scenery and the writing, give side-eye to the white Western male perspective, then book your own railroad odyssey ASAP.

"The railway bazaar, with its gadgets and passengers, represented the society so completely that to board it was to be challenged by the national character. At times it was like a leisurely seminar, but I also felt on some occasions that it was like being jailed and then assaulted by the monstrously typical." (p. 235)

also mentioned: The Mezzotint by M. R. James

Norman Mailer, First Impressions

An odd first experience with Norman Mailer: very engaging, well-written book (The Naked and the Dead) that took me just about three months to read (why.) and seemed more like it was from 1970's Vietnam than 1948 WWII.  Also odd in that I didn't have any marginalia commentary.

Back in 1948, The Naked and the Dead  was considered a "powerful cultural attack on the sentimentality and heroic quality of wartime culture" (Saving Private Ryan and Postwar Memory, Bodnar), something that would only increase and magnify with Vietnam in 20 years. The majority of the book takes place in the tropical jungle and I really kept forgetting this was WWII. There's the "pointless mission" trope, comedic bureaucracy, the enemy as the victim and the non-heroic qualities of the main male characters. And just for good measure let's throw in religious and sexual subtexts (don't ask, don't tell circa 1940's). Bodnar writes that the characters are "consumed by personal quests of power and destructiveness" -- the same in war as in socioeconomic America. You could probably write an entire thesis on the trifecta of Cummings, Hearn and Croft, all of whom have since become stereotypical characters with bits and pieces in other war fiction (and probably non-fiction). 

Bottom line(s): As I was nearing the end of the book I was reading with a sense of dread and cliche: man, I KNOW what's going to happen next, but I need to read it anyway and it's not going to end well. In fact, it ended better than expected and not as expected. Some surprise twists and turns. The book definitely checks all the boxes for 'postwar critical fiction' but the writing was excellent and I look forward to reading something different by Mailer. Or, since this book was so prescient, what he has to say about Vietnam.

Transcendentalism at Home & Abroad

I've held off commenting on Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard while I finished Henry David Thoreau's Walden, since the two ended up connecting. Snow Leopard was something I stumbled across at a used bookstore and Walden was background reading for my upcoming New England vacation -- yes, I will be one of those annoying tourist people and yes, I will be posting afterward.

I expected Snow Leopard to be more of an adventure thrill-read and was surprised to find almost all the action was internal, an autobiography of the author's spiritual journey across the Tibetan Plateau in the 1970s. Matthiessen, who died last year, was a naturalist writer, a CIA agent, and the co-founder of The Paris Review -- what a guy. He sets out on a journey across Tibet with renowned biologist and conservationist George Schaller (still living, still renowned) to observe elusive blue sheep and hopefully catch a glimpse of the snow leopard. The underlying second reason is to seek peace and meditate after the early death of his wife from cancer. This isn't dealt with in great melodramatic chapters, but rather in a few scattered paragraphs among straightforward travel prose, which I thought was very affecting. A few notes:

"In other days, I understood mountains differently, seeing in them something that abides ... they appalled me with their 'permanence', with that awful and irrefutable rock-ness that seemed to intensify my sense of my own transience. Perhaps this dread of transience explains our greed for the few gobbets of raw experience in modern life ..." (p.256)

"Left alone, I am overtaken by that northern void ... This stillness to which all returns, this is reality, and soul and sanity have no more meaning here than a gust of snow; such transience and insignificance are exalting, terrifying, all at once ..." (p. 179)

Bharal (blue sheep) in Tibet; photo by George Schaller, source

Both of these quotes speak to the existential power of the "sublime" in nature; see my previous entry on de Botton's The Art of Travel, which really hit the nail on the head. Further:

"The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life." (p.257)

Mindfulness, yes! And now let's rewind over 100 years and see what Thoreau had to say about that: "... we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us." (p.77, Walden) Side question: is it easier or harder to do this today, in the abundance of Instagram and Twitter as-it-happens updates? Does it detract from reality or illuminate reality?

Matthiessen spends a lot of time discussing Buddhism and Thoreau throws in several references to "Hindoo" beliefs. I guess Eastern spiritualism has a more intuitive connection with nature than Western religion? Or at least lends itself more easily to environmental philosophy? For more on transcendentalism: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

In minor contrast to Matthiessen, Thoreau goes into the woods seeking to live on his own, in solitude, as a test of his independence/resourcefulness and a way to "stick it to the man" (not a direct quote). A man living off the land and bucking conformity -- the most Americana thing ever. Thoreau also includes chapters on personal economy, the importance of reading, and "the ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor" (why hello there, Sartre!). In both books, Matthiessen and Thoreau embrace a temporary apart-ness from modern society in the interest of enlightenment. One goes all the way to remote Tibet while the other goes two miles down the road, so I guess it's all about your mindset. See also: thoughts on Into the Wild & the case of Chris McCandless. While Matthiessen and Thoreau avoid McCandless' romanticizing nature, I'd like to point out that Matthiessen leaves his now-motherless young son behind to go into the wilderness. I give that some side-eye.

More naturalist works remain on the reading list, Thoreau's mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson included, and it'll be interesting to compare the individual nuances on transcendentalism and environmental philosophy.

Parting quote: "Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is." (p.78, Walden)

Bottom line: Two transcendental journeys, one into his backyard and the other halfway across the globe. Introspection and nature like peanut butter and jelly. 

Summer Reading: Selections from the Smorgasbord

1. The Jungle Book

I started David Grann's The Lost City of Z thinking it was a work of fiction and was pleasantly surprised and intrigued to find it was historical non-fiction. The book follows renowned jungle explorer Percy Fawcett on his ill-fated Amazon expeditions in the early 1900s, when the age of traditional exploration was coming to a close. Similar to the Oliver Sacks book from earlier, I kept pausing to check Wikipedia because ... REALLY? That REALLY happened? Way more entertaining than anticipated and full of disgusting tidbits about the effects of Amazonian insects and climate. Even more exciting than the book (published in 2010) is that the storyline has since advanced in real life (spoiler alert: Amazon's Lost World).

Bottom line: Highly recommend! A fast, fascinating read. David Grann is a cool dude and a talented journalist; I would totally read more of his work.

2.  Hideous Men

Yes, yes, another David Foster Wallace entry.  Unlike the previous short essay collections I've read (Consider the Lobster & A Supposedly Fun Thing), Brief Interviews with Hideous Men was all semi-related short stories. It was also my least favorite, sadly. I thought the tone was depressing and dark, lacking all the YES! moments and hilarity of the other two collections, and while the writing was inventive, it just didn't do it for me. I also kept falling into the author biography trap, where I'd be reading a story thinking, "Is this what the author thought of himself? Is this a transcript of his inner monologue? Because he was depressed? And on meds? And maybe this is how he felt and what he thought about?" It was impossible to read the collection without going through that filter, and I wonder how I would've felt about the book had I NOT known the author's back-story. 

Bottom line: Mostly I agree with this article, The Last Book I Loved:

"... you might add that the word “joy” is not one you would necessarily use to describe the book. Try explaining all this while wondering to yourself if you give David Foster Wallace a pass because it’s such, like, a thing to discuss his books and be seen reading them on the bus."

Two Readings on Perception: Part II

Alain de Botton's The Art of Travel has been on my reading list for years and I finally found it tucked away at an independent bookstore this summer. Similar to Oliver Sacks' book from Part I, this was the first book of Botton's I've read, after hearing recommendations and accolades for ages. It's an easy read and a little gem; not so much travel essays as musings on travel and the philosophy behind it, with many YES! moments that pretty much guarantee I'll be reading more of his work.

"I had inadvertently brought myself to the island." (p.19) I find this becoming more true in the adult world, where I need to worry about what I've booked for when and what's going to happen at work while I'm gone and also check my text messages and email and Facebook and the news. There's a joy in vacation planning and anticipating escape from the daily grind, but, as Botton points out, the daily grind follows you in habits. It takes a conscious effort to not think about work and not constantly check the smartphone. This was significantly easier on my most recent vacation due to lack of an international roaming plan and overpriced pay-by-the-hour wifi. I had also spent a chunk of change to get where I was going and god damn it, I was going to pay attention to the present moment.

And about that "being present in the moment" thing: I liked Botton's suggestion that we try to adopt a travel mind-set to more local places. Our own neighborhoods seem boring because we see them every day on autopilot and just tune out. When I first moved into the city, sitting at a street-corner cafe and reading was almost thrillingly new. Living the life! While still enjoyable today, it's less of a novelty and I catch myself focused more on where I need to go next and what time is it and wow it's hot outside ...

I LOVED Botton's take on the beauty of nature. LOVED. IT. There was so much YES! and spot-on prose, like this quote: "We may see in nature certain scenes that will stay with us throughout our lives and offer us, every time they enter our consciousness, both a contrast to and relief from present difficulties." (p.151)  He also discusses nature as a way to connect with a "greater power" in a society increasing disillusioned with religious institutions, summarized perfectly here:

"If the world seems unfair or beyond our understanding, sublime places suggest that it is not surprising that things should be thus ... [they] gently move us to acknowledge limitations that we might otherwise encounter with anxiety or anger ... it is the vast spaces of nature that perhaps provide us with the finest, the most respectful reminder of all that exceeds us." (p.176)

cited by Botton: The Rocky Mountains, Landers Peak (Albert Bierstadt, 1863)

Other odds & ends: 
- Flaubert cameo
- relation to art
- why we take souvenirs

Botton line: Come for the relatable themes, stay for the profundity of the prose.