On travelling
Theodore Zeldin is a fascinating yet frustrating writer. The son of Russian Jews, he was born ‘on the slopes of Mount Carmel’ in the 1930’s (which was then part of Palestine, I believe). However, the family migrated, and he was educated in England from an early age. He had a stellar academic career, graduating from London University at the age of 17, and subsequently took a second undergraduate degree at the University of Oxford: both were with first class honours! With a PhD awarded while a student at St Anthony’s, where he then became a Fellow, Oxford was to be his home from then on. He has collected awards and prizes; a recognised intellectual he cites his hobbies as “gardening, painting and mending things”. So English![i]
In 1994, he published ‘An Intimate History of Humanity’.[ii] I bought it when it came out and devoured it. With chapter titles like ‘Why there has been more progress in cooking than in sex’ and ‘How the art of escaping from one’s troubles has developed, but not the art of knowing where to escape to’, it was a compelling read. Packed full of biographies of people you would be unlikely to meet, full of wise observations, and littered with continuing diversions and unexpected segues, I couldn’t put it down. Nearly twenty-five years later, it is still a book I delve into occasionally, and certainly one you should read if you can.
Chapter 17 was headed ‘How travellers are becoming the largest nation in the world, and how they have learned not to see only what they are looking for’. That chapter has been a text for me when I am working with a group from overseas. I ask them to think about what they might see as they travel to a new city. After exploring ideas, I ask them to read the chapter.
Frustratingly, and despite that great heading, Zeldin ends his chapter by suggesting “The most admirable characters in the history of travel are those who have been most useful to their hosts. A journey is successful when the traveller returns as an ambassador for the country he has visited, just as an actor is most successful when he enters into a character and discovers something of himself in the part he plays.”[iii]
Frustrating, because the end doesn’t suit the beginning of the chapter. For me, it is not the part about being an ambassador, important though that is, but the part about the actor that rings true. When we visit another country, we are offered the chance to learn more about ourselves. It was that which many travellers do not see, even though the opportunity was there.
I am about to go travelling again, spending some time in Asia, and then back in Australia. The cities I am going to visit are familiar to me, to some extent at least. Shanghai and Macau keep changing, while Hong Kong and Melbourne do too, although more slowly. There are two types of experience I will enjoy. The first is the culture, through food, art, music, and yes, architecture, too. I already know some museums and galleries which are of particular interest. The second is equally important, the people I will meet, not just family and friends but those I haven’t met before (and may not meet again).
In workshops I will talk with various men and women, some relatively young, some nearly as old as I am. Some will fascinate me, and I’m not sure why: they will hold my attention, and I will watch and listen to them carefully. And in trying to understand them, I know somewhere in my subconscious I will be thinking about myself, my life, what I am doing.
I also find a kind of peace in travel that is different from that at home. In Pfafftown, I can look out over our pond and think about what I am writing in an atmosphere of tranquility. In Hong Kong, I can follow the crowds swarming down Nathan Road, buffeted by hot humid air and an almost deafening wall of sound. The unfamiliarity of the experience will make me look and attend to what is going on in a different fashion. Absorbed, I find peace in the anonymity of crowds, seeing things in sharp focus, often asking myself questions about what I observe. What is that strange construction close to the subway entrance? As I watch the crowds walking around a beggar on the street, the flow of people breaking apart and then reconnecting on the other side, I’ll be intrigued. Did they see that man? What did he see?
When I travel, I am forced out of my familiar routines. There are things I will miss: my morning bowl of muesli, the quiet morning hours in my office typing out my ideas or reviewing my progress with a story. At the end of a bout of travel, I will enjoy those routines all the more. On the other hand, having to do things that are different, from the meals I eat to getting from one place to another, they have other bonuses to offer. It is as if I have a heightened sense of awareness, immediate and vivid, images and events crowding my mind. Curiosity will drive me along, ending some days tired, even slightly overwhelmed.
Does travel feed back into what I write? I haven’t been writing fiction for a few weeks now, not because I’ve hit a block but more because I have been busy with other tasks. I won’t be able to do much writing while I travel, but I have learnt to take a couple of notebooks with me, keeping a record of scenes, parts of plots for a future story, or an issue I want to explore back home. I will also take my iPad and keyboard: there are evenings when I may be able to type for an hour or two, possibly writing a blog while on the road! Yes, a new environment provides a creative push, even if what appears on the page seems rather far from the experience I was enjoying.
I often travel, but in a different sense. Reading is a form of travel, too. For the past few months, I have been going through a veritable orgy of immersion in detective novels, diving into the worlds of P D James, Louise Penny, Elizabeth George, Kathy Reichs, Julia Spencer Fleming and Karin Slaughter. An orgy? No, more like a cold shower, bracing and challenging. The more I have read, the more I have had to think about myself as a writer. I started this round of reading with a focus on the plots, murders as mysteries, but as I’ve continued, I have noticed that the plots don’t stick with me as much as the people do.
Some are fascinating because of their flaws. Commander Dalgleish, that thoughtful and quiet detective and poet meeting beautiful Emma Lavenham. At one point I almost shouted at him “talk to her, for heaven’s sake”! To be so shy, so reluctant that he could only communicate through letters! And as I shook my head, I knew that was an uncomfortable insight into me, too.
Or Superintendent Isabelle Ardery in the Inspector Lynley books. She was the one who grabbed my attention in that series, fearfully reading on as she slipped further and further in alcoholism. A compelling and very telling account of addiction, and something I, like many others, know is not that far away, lurking somewhere on the edge of an otherwise well-regulated life.
And then there’s Temperance Brennan in Kathy Reich’s novels: can’t that damn woman recognise and accept she’s in love. I mean, really, how much longer is long-suffering and loyal Andrew Ryan going to have to wait?
Others are living such real – that means complex – and difficult lives that I am always worried what they will do next, in love lives, in work lives, in the future. The Reverend Clare Fergusson, conflicted, damaged by war, in love with a man as complicated as she is: what is going to happen to them, in a place with the unlikely name of ‘Millers Kill’! Or Sara Linton in Karin Slaughter’s fraught and frightening stories. How much more is she going to endure? Is Will Trent able to step past his handicaps and mistakes, and will they find some kind of resolution together? Good writing, you will say, leaving endings incomplete, making you want to buy the next book. It’s more than that. Even when I am immersed in one of the novels, it is often more than enough to process what has happened, let alone wonder about what’s next.
Travelling in detective novels. Some journeys are slight, the author offering a poor opportunity to learn and explore. But others manage to convey a whole world for me that is both real (or at least realistic) and yet amazing. When Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir are in Three Pines, I can feel that village, see the strange characters who have chosen to live there, taste the breakfast served in the bistro, and sit on a bench with Ruth and her duck watching the regulars go buy. Now I’m not just travelling, I am transported by Louise Penny’s words. And as I think about the latest Gamache novel I’ve just finished, the outcome for me turned out to be quite unexpected. Yes, Armand Gamache solved another complicated case, but it is Jean-Guy I am thinking about: can he, even will he, get past his issues with the past, stop living on oxycontin, become whole again? I want to talk to him, help him, even mentor him: hard to do for someone who only exists on the page and in my imagination!
If my reading at present has a large component of detective fiction, I have been delving into other novels and non-fiction. Much of my focus right now is on books that explore people, whether in fiction or in fact. This week I have been learning about the Dulles brothers, John Foster and Allen, in Stephen Kinzer’s somewhat gossipy biography[iv] and at the same time I am rereading Paul Johnson’s biased, tendentious and inevitably fascinating history of the US – which he carefully and appropriately titled ‘A History of the American People’.[v]
The more I read, the less I travel in some other realms. I don’t get the same experience in watching films or television. The journey seems more distant, uninvolving. My emotions can be exploited (my wife and children know I am notorious for blubbering through most films), but it’s a transitory thing. I’m on the outside, looking in, watching without any deep engagement. If I watch a television series I feel as if I am being told what to see, while books leave so much for me to fill in for myself.
I’m not doctrinaire. I have watched some television in the past couple of weeks. The first episode of the new version on Civilisation. I’m not sure if I will watch any more: Simon Schama’s constantly waving arms were distracting, even rather annoying. Mary Beard might be better. I also watched the first story in the ‘Unforgotten’ series. That was really frustrating. What had happened to Nicola Walker, so good in MI-5 and River, but here she was less convincing? Television for some light relief, but it ain’t the same as a good book!
Zeldin thought a “journey is successful when the traveller returns as an ambassador for the country he has visited.” When I reread that recently, I thought about the Japanese man I saw in The Louvre. He was walking through the galleries with his iPad on, the camera scanning the pictures and sculptures he passed, while he offered a commentary. After a couple of minutes, I heard a voice, and realised he wasn’t recording, this was live, possibly back to Japan. I fear he might have thought he was like a kind of ambassador, transmitting the experience to a friend; as I saw it, he had no connection with the scene around him, transmitting, but with no meaningful experience for him to communicate or for his friend to understand at the other end.[vi]
How does the old saying go? “Life is a journey, not a destination”. But to learn from that journey, you have to be a traveller. Lao Tzu once said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with taking the first step (the key word was ‘taking’ which is often omitted or missed). His point was simple: travelling is active, not a passive account of the steps involved. To travel but never to arrive. Switchfoot, an American “alternative rock band” song ‘Thrive’ includes the verse:
No, I’m not alright
I know that I’m not right
Feel like I travel but I never arrive
I wanna thrive not just survive
I guess I’m different. I want to travel, and not to arrive. That’s how I thrive, whether travelling physically or in my mind. Travelling keeps me alive. Unlike many people I know, I don’t have a ‘bucket list’ of things I must do and places I must visit. I enjoy new experiences, but I also savour the rewards of going back to places both real and imaginary again and again, often seeing them afresh simply because the obvious is no longer so important. One thing is clear: I’ll never arrive, because the desire to understand is unquenchable. When I was asked to write a brief background recently, I re-examined my tired old paragraph, and now I introduce myself as a traveller, a wanderer.[vii] I have lived in various places and countries, I have wandered between jobs in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors, but that’s not it. I am restless, wanting to explore new ideas, learn from the experiences of others. I keep on reading!
Theodore Zeldin remains fascinating and frustrating. Yes, sometimes I do act as an ambassador for the places I visit, telling people about the Art Museum in Shanghai, the thoughtfulness of the staff in a Macau hotel … and sometimes, like an actor in a role, I discover something more about myself, what it means to be in the world, and that, more than anything else, is richly, deeply rewarding.
[i] For more details, Wikipedia gives a good summary: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Zeldin>
[ii] Harper Collins, although in the UK it first appeared under Sinclair-Stevenson, part of the Reed Group.
[iii] Op cit, pages 312-3
[iv] Stephen Kinzer, The Brothers, St Martins Griffin, 2013
[v] Paul Johnson, A History of the American People, Harper, 1998
[vi] I did remind me of that rather racist joke about a Japanese man returning after a visit to Europe. He was asked if he had enjoyed the visit. He replied: “I don’t know. I haven’t seen the video yet”. The man in the joke didn’t have to be Japanese, of course.
[vii] At one stage I called myself a gypsy but discovered ‘gypsy’ has connotations that were best avoided!
