Part 1 (1/2)
Book l.u.s.t to Go.
Nancy Pearl.
INTRODUCTION.
I am not an enthusiastic traveler. Let me lay my cards on the table, clear the air, call a spade a spade, and make something perfectly clear. I am barely a traveler at all. I would like to attribute this to ”The Unexplorer,” a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay that I read when I was about thirteen and deeply into poetry. It's from her collection called A Few Figs from Thistles and is a whole novel in six short lines, all about a young girl enraptured by the road outside her house.When she asks her mother about it, she's told that the road ”led to the milkman's door.” Millay concludes with the line: ”(That's why I have not traveled more.)”
And then I've always feared that what Ralph Waldo Emerson said in Self-Reliance is true:Traveling is a fool's paradise . . . I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.
But to blame that sort of literary disillusionment for my lack of travel would be romantic in the extreme, and also highly disingenuous. Here's why I don't travel: I am stymied by the very activities of planning a trip and figuring out an itinerary, choosing dates and what to pack. I am frustrated by my inability to speak any language except English. My high school French just won't cut it. You try finding a Laundromat in Tallinn without knowing Estonian and you'll soon discover that although everyone has a.s.sured you that all Estonians speak at least a rudimentary form of English, that doesn't really seem to apply to most people over thirty. I don't blame them for not speaking English; I blame myself for not speaking Estonian so I could explain that I just wanted to wash my dirty clothes.
I am also made anxious by the seemingly simple act of leaving my house. I can manage meeting friends for coffee, going for walks in my familiar neighborhood, and geocaching. But even that last activity, as much as I enjoy being with my geocaching buddies, is more often than not nerve-wracking in the extreme as we drive to and disembark in unfamiliar locales all around the city.That's about it, travelwise, for me.
In his book Between Terror and Tourism, Michael Mewshaw writes of arriving in a totally inhospitable desert locale: ”The pleasure of being where I had never been before, doing what I had never done, bound for who knew what-I found it all thrilling. I always have.”
And I have not, alas.
So in one way of looking at it, I am totally the wrong person to write a book about travel; on the other hand, I am absolutely the perfect person. I am, in fact, a virtual traveler, via books. I have always loved reading armchair travel books and accounts of das.h.i.+ng and daring explorers. I adore books-whether fiction or nonfiction-that give me a sense of being in another place and time. There are so many wonderful books that do exactly that; it was the impetus for Book l.u.s.t To Go. The first thing I did when I started working on this book was to purchase a large and up-to-date world map and put it up on the wall of the room where I write, so it was easy for me to get up from my desk, look at where a country or city was located, and understand its political and geographical context. It's probably one of the best purchases I've ever made.
Now for some information about what's in this book (and what's not).
First, as with the other three books in the Book l.u.s.t series, I've included t.i.tles that are both in print and out of print. Honestly, I wish they were all in print and easily available at libraries and bookstores. We're lucky in this age of the Internet that many out-of-print books are easy to locate and purchase online. And you can take advantage of the inter-library loan service most libraries offer their patrons.
Second, I've included my favorite armchair travel narratives, as well as biographies of explorers, memoirs, novels set in various countries around the world, and a smattering of history. I hope they'll become your favorites as well, whether you're a virtual or actual traveler.
Third, Book l.u.s.t, published in 2003, and More Book l.u.s.t, which came out in 2005, featured lots of t.i.tles that would have fit wonderfully into Book l.u.s.t To Go. If I had ever imagined that I would write a Book l.u.s.t series, I might have saved them to include here, but I never saw that coming (nor, I think, did anyone else). I have generally chosen not to repeat t.i.tles here, except when one seemed especially well suited for Book l.u.s.t To Go. So before you email me about a t.i.tle or an author that you're concerned I've omitted from Book l.u.s.t To Go, be sure to check my other books first!
One of my favorite discoveries while I was doing all of the preliminary reading for BLTG (as I affectionately refer to it) was reading Josie Dew's memoir A Ride in the Neon Sun. Here's what she says about traveling:Some people travel with firm ideas for a journey, following in the footsteps of an intrepid ancestor whose exotic exploits were happened upon in a dusty, cobweb-laced attic containing immovable trunks full of sepia-curled daguerreotypes and age-discoloured letters redolent of bygone days. Others travel for anthropological, botanical, archaeological, geological, and other logical reasons. Some are smitten by a specific country brewed from childhood dreams. For others, travel is a challenge, a release, an escape, a shaking off of the shackles, and even if they don't know where they will end up they usually know where they will begin.
The very hardest part of writing this book was that I was unable to stop working on it. I kept reading even after the initial ma.n.u.script was turned in, discovering new t.i.tles and authors whose works I just couldn't bear to leave out. I even envisioned myself watching the book being printed and shouting periodically, ”Stop the presses!” so that I could add yet another section or t.i.tle. But of course the day actually came when I knew I had to stop or there would never be an end to the project.And here is the result, in your hands right now.
So, before your next trip-either virtual or actual-grab a pen and begin making notes about the t.i.tles that sound good to you. And enjoy the journeys.
I'd love to hear from you. My email address is .com.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.
Many people gave me great suggestions for books to include in Book l.u.s.t To Go. I want to give an especial shout-out to Martha Bayley, who actually kick-started the whole process of me really sitting down and writing up all my notes; in addition, she contributed both the ”Inside the Inside Pa.s.sage” section and ”We'll Always Have Paris.” She is herself both a virtual and actual traveler, and over the years has recommended many terrific books.And Anna Minard, who initially organized my reams of random bits of paper-something I never could have done on my own-into a coherent arrangement.
And to all these folks for their help of many different sorts: Na.s.sim a.s.sefi; Jen Baker; Abby Ba.s.s; Colleen Brady; Brad Craft; Marilyn Dahl; Beth de la Fuente; Janneke Dijkstra; Jason Felton; Margaret Ford; Gitana Garofalo; Gail Goodrick; Andrea Gough; Alex Harris; Phyllis Hatfield; Jim Horton; Christine Jeffords; Linda Johns; Mark Kaiser; Kathleen Kinder; Bharti Kirschner; David Laskin; Mike Leber; Susan Linn; Lisa Lundstrom; Nancy McGill; Cindy Mitch.e.l.l; Gina Nahai; Hannah Parker; Eily Raman; Gayle Richardson; Matt Rowe; Cadi Russell-Sauve; Robin Pforr Ryan; Murray Sampson; Anne Schwendiman; Jake Silverstein; Kale Sniderman; Stephen and Marilyn Sniderman; Shoshana Sniderman-Wise; Dana Stabenow; Manya and Par Sundstrom; Martha Tofferi; Jason Vanhee; Agnes Wiacek; David Wright; Neal Wyatt (for the ”Anglophile's Literary Pilgrimage,” ”Comics with a Sense of Place,” and ”Lyme Regis” sections, and who is always as excited about my books as I am); and Mich.e.l.le Young.
I apologize in advance if I've inadvertently omitted your name....
And all my thanks to the wonderful folks at Sasquatch Books-it takes a concerted togetherness to get a book from an idea to the printed page, and everyone at Sasquatch has been nothing less than supportive, especially Gary Luke, Sarah Hanson, Rach.e.l.le Longe, Tess Tabor, and Shari Miranda.
As always, love to my husband, Joe, to whom I owe more than I can say-he makes everything I do possible and makes possible everything that I do.
This book is dedicated to my granddaughter Jessica Pearl Raman, because it's her turn and I love her.
A IS FOR ADVENTURE.
Any sort of adventurous travel comes with an almost guaranteed risk: anything can-and often does-go wrong, whether it's bad weather, bad decisions, bad karma, or simply bad luck. In addition to the best-selling armchair adventure t.i.tles by authors like Jon Krakauer, Sebastian Junger, or Linda Greenlaw, try these riveting accounts.
In Adrift by Steven Callahan, the author must use his inflatable life raft after his small sloop capsized after less than a week out on the open waters of the North Atlantic. The seventy-six days at sea that he spent fighting for his life and his sanity make for a spellbinding tale.
A Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nichols is about the first Golden Globe Race in 1968, in which-as the book's tagline has it-”Nine men set out to race each other around the world. Only one made it back.” I read with a growing sense of shock-and no little admiration-how these men, for various and sundry reasons, decided to risk their bodies (and their minds) to take part in a race sans GPS, sans mobile phones, and in boats that seemed all but guaranteed not to survive the trip. Chay Blyth, who had very little experience in open water sailing, describes the end of his race when his boat became unmanageable during an unseasonable gale:So I lowered the sails . . . and once I had lowered them there was nothing more I could do except pray. So I prayed. And between times I turned to one of my sailing manuals to see what advice it contained for me. It was like being in h.e.l.l with instructions.
Jeffrey Tayler's River of No Reprieve: Descending Siberia's Waterway of Exile, Death, and Destiny and Murderers in Mausoleums: Riding the Back Roads of Empire Between Moscow and Beijing both showcase the author's talents as a travel writer: powers of keen observation and an ability to convey his own palpable enthusiasm for exotic places and interesting people, even as danger is always just around the corner.
Many people make the choice to set off on an adventure, but the men described in Dean King's Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival merely ended up where they did by accident. In August of 1815, twelve crew members from the Connecticut merchant brig Commerce were s.h.i.+pwrecked off the western coast of Africa, enslaved by a Bedouin tribe, and forced to accompany their captors-by foot and by camelback-on a seemingly endless, desperately grueling, and bone-dry trek through the sands of the western Sahara desert (now part of Morocco). King based his book on two first-person accounts of the experience the men underwent; from these two works, King has constructed a gripping and page-turning narrative of survival and courage. The fact that as this story was unfolding alongside a parallel story of survival and courage in the face of dire circ.u.mstances-the abduction and enslavement in the ”New World” of African native men, women, and children-makes King's book especially ironic.
Deep-sea diving off the coast of French Polynesia: could anything be more, well, um, adventurous? Not according to Julia Whitty in The Fragile Edge: Diving and Other Adventures in the South Pacific.
James West Davidson and John Rugge's Great Heart: The History of a Labrador Adventure chronicles the story of a failed exploration that was dogged with bad luck, as well as its complicated aftermath.
Mumbai to Mecca: A Pilgrimage to the Holy Sites of Islam by Ilija Trojanow (his name is also spelled Ilya Troyanov-see the section called ”Star Trekkers” for another of his books) is one of the bound-to-be-cla.s.sic travelogues: an account of the Hajj as seen through the eyes of a Western journalist sympathetic to Islam.
I enjoyed so many of the selections Lamar Underwood collected in The Greatest Adventure Stories Ever Told. They include both fiction and nonfiction, from an Arthur Conan Doyle non-Sherlockian short story and Tom Wolfe's account of Chuck Yeager's breaking the sound barrier, to a short story by Arthur C. Clarke and Joel P. Kramer's ”A Harrowing Journey,” which describes a trip (by foot and kayak) through New Guinea that seemed so desperately foolhardy I found myself wincing in sympathetic pain while I was reading it.
AFGHANISTAN: GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES.
As with many of the places I've included in this book, probably the only way we're going to get to visit Afghanistan (unless we're in the military) in the next few years is through the books we read. I somehow doubt that most of us will be making vacation plans to visit Kabul. But who knows? You may be far more adventurous than I.
The only positive outcome of the events of 9/11 that I can see is the proliferation of books-both fiction and nonfiction-set in a country that most of us never before paid much attention to. I wrote a whole section in More Book l.u.s.t that covers fiction and nonfiction about Afghanistan's past and present, and you might want to begin there. But, to quote Lewis Carroll's ”The Walrus and the Carpenter” on the subject of oysters,”And thick and fast they came at last / And more and more and more.” It's true, as all you observant readers have already gathered by now, that this is not a section that's going to provide a lot of laughs. On the other hand, most of these books are perfect selections for your book group. But do me one favor-read these in the spring (or summer) of the year. They aren't-for the most part-the best choice for gray and rainy days.
Nonfiction.
One of the best books I read in 2009 (although perhaps”experienced” is a better choice of verb) was the graphic novel The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders by Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefevre, and Frederic Lemercier. It's the powerful story of Lefevre's first a.s.signment as a photojournalist in 1986, accompanying a team of Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) who were traveling through Pakistan to Afghanistan, during the long b.l.o.o.d.y conflict between the invading Soviet Union troops and the Taliban. The pictures include both Lefevre's original contact sheets (it's interesting to note that contact sheets of photos are not unlike strips of comics) and Guibert's drawings, while the text is reconstructed from discussions Guibert and Lefevre had about the journey. Graphic designer Lemercier a.s.sembled the book. (Lefevre's journals-mentioned in the book-were lost years before.) Other good reading choices:.
Saira Shah's The Storyteller's Daughter: One Woman's Return to Her Lost Homeland weaves tales that Shah heard growing up in Britain with her own impressions during a long sojourn in country. Shah is also a highly regarded filmmaker, whose doc.u.mentary Beneath the Veil: Inside the Taliban's Afghanistan is disturbing and necessary viewing for anyone interested in understanding the country. As is her book.
In his Opium Season: A Year on the Afghan Frontier, Joel Hafvenstein describes the year he spent working with an American aid organization to try to help Afghani farmers raise crops other than those that have been their livelihood for generations.