Is Travel Literature In Crisis (Again)?

Marian Botsford Fraser certainly isn’t the first to say so in recent months, but in an essay in The Walrus, she offers a more colorful, thoughtful argument than most. “What we carelessly refer to as ‘travel literature,’” she writes, “is, at this moment, a pirogue trapped in a cul-de-sac of a mangrove swamp on an African river—waterways the Victorian writer Mary Kingsley described in her ‘Travels in West Africa’ as ‘utter frauds which will ground you within half an hour of your entering them.’”

She argues that travel writing has always been a reflection of the era that produced it—and that the current era produces “floundering and aimlessness.” 

She’s right that the great journeys of geographical discovery have largely been tapped, and that the world is more accessible to the average person than ever before. She may even be right when she says that “the heroic is no longer compelling,” and that “the great white perspective on the exotic seems irrelevant, even insulting.”

But just because there will never be another Richard Burton, does it necessarily follow that travel writing is becoming obsolete? I don’t think so.

Sure, I may be able to check out photos of Syria, say, on Flickr anytime I please, but for me, it’s the people met along the way that make travel—and great travel writing—so compelling. No amount of satellite imaging, post-colonial politicking or literary hand-wringing will ever change that.

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Photo by James Gordon via Flickr (Creative Commons)

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