Is Travel Writing a Debased and Exhausted Genre?

Jason Cowley didn’t waste any time bashing travel writers in a recent issue of the New Statesman. In his review of Helena Drysdale’s “Mother Tongues: Travels Through Tribal Europe,” he launches into a blistering critique in the first sentence.  “Travel writing is, on the whole, a debased and exhausted genre,” he writes. “Most modern travel books are truth-free zones, in which acts are never allowed to interrupt a good story, dialogue is recollected in tranquillity and thus unconvincingly burnished, and imaginative fancy is irresponsibly indulged.” He supports his points with references to certain recent books, and we reluctantly agree that self-indulgence and laziness have crept into some modern travel writing. But we reject his rejection of the entire genre. Modern travel writers are grappling with an evolving, ever-shrinking world. As we struggle with how to navigate and interpret our new landscape, sometimes we’ll float a few duds, perhaps like the ones Cowley points out. But we’ll also turn out worthwhile voices of strength, experimentation and imagination. Stretching the narrow limits of what Cowley deems exemplary travel writing isn’t a literary crime. It’s a necessity. After all, if we all stayed confined within our own borders, that would mark the real demise of travel writing.

 

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