THE
TRAVEL SECTION
Roads Not Taken
BY
THOMAS SWICK
Why
is so much travel writing so boring? Why on Monday morning do
people talk about an op-ed piece they read in the Sunday paper,
or a sports column, or a magazine essay, or a feature profile,
but rarely a travel story? Why do the travel magazines, lavish
with tips and sumptuous photographs, leave us feeling so empty?
(Journalism's tiramisu.) Why has the travel book become a rich
literary domain while the travel story has not?
One
simple answer is that Travel is not a high priority at any newspaper.
Like Food, Fashion, Home & Garden, it is far removed from
the main business of reporting the news. Yet the Travel section
has enormous potential precisely because of its life of low expectations.
It need not adhere to the strictures of journalism that govern
the rest of the newspaper -- brevity, clarity, distance; instead
it can accommodate leisurely, nuanced, occasionally passionate
writing. Because it is not the most important section of the paper
-- quite the contrary -- it can experiment, take risks, have fun.
It should -- by virtue of its generous space, deadlines, and subject
matter -- feature the best writing in the newspaper.
But
it's had its handicaps. In the old days Travel sections brimmed
with florid passages of trumped-up delights, usually written by
a recent guest of the hotel or island or tour being extolled.
Then in the late 1980s a debate on ethics was launched, and many
papers cut their ties with writers who took subsidized trips.
This should have improved the sections, since many of the people
cast out -- so called "professional travel writers" -- were free-loaders
who had simply found a cheap way to travel.
But
the trend had already shifted toward more service-oriented articles,
telling readers where to stay and what to see and how to do it.
Of course, Travel sections have to publish helpful information;
it would be churlish of them not to. People come to them looking
not only for ideas, but for ways and means. But a concentration
on the practical to the exclusion of the evocative and ruminative
discriminates against the large number of people who -- for various
reasons -- don't travel. It ignores the fact that, in this day
of disappearing foreign bureaus, the Travel section is many papers'
only in-house window on the world at large. And it does a disservice
to people who do travel by suggesting that this patently
transportive act is nothing more than a series of negotiable transactions.
(Not to mention the fact that the job of merely stockpiling information
is now being done much better -- with greater timeliness and infinitely
wider scope -- on the Internet.)
To
serve their purposes, without appearing too utilitarian, newspapers
have created a standard type of travel story that is generally
about a person who goes to a place -- as opposed to being about
a place -- often with a spouse or companion. In this genre, a
variation on the phrase "my husband, Ken, and I," is pretty much
de rigueur by at least the third paragraph. These two prim sojourners
invariably stay in good hotels ("elegant" if in a city, "rustic"
in the country), and eat in fine restaurants, savoring the "succulent
regional cuisine." They visit the museums and other sights, which
allows for the inclusion of pertinent historical facts, as well
as helpful touristic information. "The following two days were
packed with visits to Neapolis, the Greek theater, and the Latomia
del Paradiso (an ancient quarry, now overgrown), never leaving
us time to use the hotel's inviting private beach" (from a New
York Times story by Ken's wife, last September). The author
may express to his or her companion admiration for ancient skills
or practices, which, it is sometimes added, are sadly lacking
today. They stroll cobblestone streets, palm-fringed beaches,
hedgerowed lanes, patchwork fields (pick your picturesqueness);
they drift blissfully through a "land of contrasts." Though sometimes
baffled by strange money or foreign telephones, they are never
in any danger. They leave enchanted and refreshed -- though rarely
moved or permanently altered -- frequently vowing to return some
day. It is the travel story's equivalent of living happily ever
after, and it leaves a reader with the sense that something is
missing in this fairy tale.
For
starters, there's almost nothing negative. This is partly a vestige
of the old days of free trips, when it was bad form to speak unfavorably
of a place that had treated you lavishly. A tone of uncritical
approval crept into travel journalism that has yet to be eradicated.
Paul Theroux's famously sniping journeys are an obvious reaction
against this rosiness, though his style, despite the enormous
popularity of his books, has failed to make a dent in travel journalism.
The
irony is that in their mission to "inform" their readers, Travel
sections misinform them through their unrelenting good cheer.
A few years ago I received a call from a woman who wished to express
her despair at the large number of stray dogs she'd seen on a
trip to Puerto Rico. Her complaint was against the island, but
implicit in it was an indictment of travel journalism, for nothing
she had read about Puerto Rico had prepared her for abandoned
animals.
Joining
the "negative" in the travel story's closet of unmentionables
is a sense of the present. It is not that the stories are timeless,
but rather that their preferred frame of reference is the past.
The
narrators of conventional travel stories tend to be interested
only in history; if the present intrudes in their stories at all
it does so in the ephemeral and nugatory realm of the trendy:
the latest restaurants, the hottest clubs. But during the day,
their work hours, they dutifully visit the museums, the landmarks,
the churches, the battlefields; they ignore the everyday life
of the streets. Which is why when you read about Puerto Rico you
hear all about the colonial architecture of old San Juan and nothing
about the population of stray dogs.
A
knowledge of the past is, of course, essential to an understanding
of the present. And the past is easy: it is housed, displayed,
labeled (often in English), accessible. The present is fluid,
inchoate, and often unintelligible. It is an unknown quantity.
History books, guidebooks, travel stories have all told us the
lessons of yesteryear; the challenge and thrill of travel is discovering
those of today. And we find them in the streets and the parks,
in cafes and stadiums, in offices and homes. Some of these places
are difficult to gain access to, but that is precisely the point:
anyone can see a painting; it is a rare and invaluable privilege
to get invited in for a meal. It is this distinction -- how you
travel, not where -- that defines a traveler as opposed to a tourist.
And it is the job of travel writers to have experiences that are
beyond the realm of the average tourist, to go beneath the surface,
and then to write interestingly of what they find.
One
way to accomplish the latter is to employ the third element missing
from the conventional travel story: imagination. Most travel journalists
are under the impression that since they are writing nonfiction
-- and travel nonfiction at that -- they need only record what
is there (and, as we have seen, not all of that). Yet all writing
is enhanced by a creative imagination. To illustrate, I present
the lead from a New York Times travel story, dated September
3, 2000. (Though not the one by Ken's wife.)
Ackroyd's
imaginative sense -- aside from keeping us spellbound -- leads
to insight, which is the fourth element missing from the conventional
travel story. Good travel writers understand that times have changed,
and in an age when everybody has been everywhere (and when there
is a Travel Channel for those who haven't), it is not enough simply
to describe a landscape, you must now interpret it. Jonathan Raban,
writing about the Mississippi River floods in Granta a
few years back, opened with this show-stopping sentence: "Flying
to Minneapolis from the West, you see it as a theological problem."
He went on to describe "this right-angled, right-thinking Lutheran
country" and the "deviously winding" Mississippi River, which
"looks as if it had been put here to teach the God-fearing Midwest
a lesson about stubborn and unregenerate nature." Just as travel
sections have become more practical, travel books have become
more analytical.
Read
enough stories with sentences beginning "Just my luck" and "My
husband, Ken, and I" and you soon discover the fifth element that
is too often absent from the conventional travel story: humor.
Occasionally, you will find pieces by writers with a light, amusing
style, but the humor is almost always directed at themselves --
the innocent fumblings of the fish out of water. Its sole purpose
is to get a laugh, not to reveal interesting truths about national
character.
The
emergence of humor is handicapped by the absence of dialogue (missing
element #6). In recent times, writers of travel books have gone
to the most sparsely populated regions -- Patagonia (Bruce Chatwin)
and Siberia (Colin Thubron) -- and come back with pages of scintillating
dialogue. Even the misanthropic V.S. Naipaul stoops to talk to
the locals. Yet in the conventional travel story, no one speaks;
reading it is like moving through a landscape of mimes -- figures
are sensed, sometimes even seen, but almost never heard from.
The
absence of dialogue is directly related to the omission of the
final and most important element: people. Except for the author
and his or her companion, few characters ever clutter the stage
of the conventional travel story. Travel journalists may go to
the most densely populated cities in the world -- Tokyo, Cairo,
Mumbai; places where you are immersed in a crush of humanity --
and fail to introduce their readers to a single human being. In
the history of travel journalism, more has been written about
the animals of Africa than the people.
And
the question lingers: What can you know -- and feel -- about a
place when you don't meet the people who live in it? We learn
through human contact, and the knowledge that we gain is of infinitely
greater value than any number of practical tips. Similarly, it
is through human contact that we open our hearts. Enlightenment
and love -- there are no more compelling reasons to travel, or
write about it.
Thomas
Swick is the travel editor of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel
and the author of the travel memoir Unquiet Days: At Home
in Poland.
