Is Travel Literature In Crisis (Again)?
Travel Blog • Eva Holland • 07.02.08 | 2:08 PM ET
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.
Related on World Hum:
* World Hum’s Top 30 Travel Books
Photo by James Gordon via Flickr (Creative Commons)
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Ling 07.03.08 | 12:36 AM ET
Actually, she’s about right. Guidebook writers can now, and do, produce entire books sitting in an office using recycled material. Pioneer travel is dead as a dodo, unless space travel picks up…
Eva Holland 07.03.08 | 1:42 AM ET
Guidebook writing’s a pretty different animal from the classic literary travel narratives she’s talking about, I think. You’re right that the days of pioneer travel are long gone, but I don’t think you need to be the first person to lay eyes on a place to writesomething fantastic and insightful about it, do you?
Ling 07.03.08 | 1:54 AM ET
Heck, I can writesomething fantastic and insightful without ever having laid eyes on a place. Point is, travel writing is now all about saving money and cheap hotels and things like that. The places, and the attractions involved, are becoming less worthy of attention because its already been written about in ‘insightful’ manner a hundred times. Nobody is going to read about the people you met unless your classic travel narrative contains some good budget hotels…
Ben 07.03.08 | 2:09 PM ET
Ling: I’m afraid I disagree with you too and don’t really see “Travel Writing” as a monolithic genre. Long lists of budget hotels are about the last things I look for when browsing for new travel books. It also seems to me that you could apply your argument that everything’s already been written to many forms of literature. Should people stop writing novels because the love story’s been done a million times? Is it time to give up reading thrillers if our hair has been raised before?
Gabriel G. 07.05.08 | 2:29 PM ET
You can’t accept Fraser’s premise that travel literature has been overdone and that it’s pointless without considering the fact that memoir writing is as alive as ever. We have a hunger for experience, even if it’s vicarious hunger. And isn’t that what travel lit is about - a remembrance of how something/place changed you?