Note from the author: Ok, this started as a 5-7 page essay on travel writing ... but I got way too into it. I'm not sure who is interested in reading this 4,500 word monstrous theory on travel and my plans for my upcoming trip to Western Europe. But I figured I'd post it anyway, just on the off-chance that it reaches my target audience of someone intensely interested in travel like I am, with far too much time on their hands, again like myself. That said, enjoy:
My fingers drag across the screen of my mouse pad, I left click, and I’m booked for Portugal. I’m going to the continent, again. As you may have read, the last time I went to continental Europe was 3 months ago when I spent a week in Prague. There, the goal was as simple as it was accomplished. Pick a city. Stay for at least a week. By the end of it, don’t feel like a tourist. The inescapable fact of my being a tourist despite this goal was irrelevant. I knew I was a tourist; I just didn’t want to feel like one. Through the week, I got to know the city, briefly dated an Australian local, hung out with some crazy dudes from New Zealand, smoked a spliff with a Czech at his birthday party, met travellers that were only here for a few days, watched them go, met new travellers, and by the end of the week I was able to block out the nagging reality of being a tourist in favour of not feeling like one.
As I have now a one-way ticket to Portugal and limited fund of $1,259 left in my savings account, I plan to explore Western Europe with different goals in mind. First, I am taking my laptop with me. I deliberately avoided doing so in my trip to Prague, deciding instead on writing a novella about my week in Prague upon my return, a story to culminate the experience after reflecting upon it back home in England. This time, I plan to blog on the road, post in Europe; and, as my plans on the continent are completely open-ended from the moment I touch down in Lisbon, my blog will reflect the open-ended nature of my travels in my writing. When I post, I, like you, will not know from where I will go, or what I will do, or, to be honest, if I am safe, or if I return.
I feel that this directly addresses the main flaw of travel writing as a genre. In my research for an independent-study on travel (hence why I’m writing this. I was going to just hand it in to my professor, but instead I thought I’d make a post out of it ... hope it doesn’t get too long/dry), the assurance and certainty of return is an inescapable fact of the genre. When one reads about Bill Bryson disputing his hotel bill in Copenhagen or Twain’s thoughts on travel in Italy, the certainty of their safe return always combats or lessens the effect that that any harrowing or exhilarating incidents will have on the reader. Meaning, when writing about something like travel, where the journey itself is the main pleasure in its own abstraction, the journey back, the physical movement of the traveller back to its origins, is no less significant than the journey from. The Odyssey isn’t about the Trojan War, but about Odysseus’ journey back to Ithaca. Travel writers such as Bryson or Twain no doubt realize this importance, but their failure to disguise the factuality of their return from the reader ultimately results, I am arguing, in a lessened impact of the events that occur along the trip. For, the reader knows, despite what tricks the author tries to conjure, that the author has returned and their trip has ended, manifesting itself in the physical, published book they hold in their hands.
For my upcoming travels, it will be one of my goals to avoid this nagging characteristic of the genre. The assurance of return, I contend, and would support through my own experience of travel writing about Prague, ultimately and unavoidably affects the style and content of the writing. For, though the author may wave his wand, and wave it quite well, what is even further inescapable is the author’s own knowledge of return. It alters content. It changes events to construct a narrative. It is the goal of the author to recreate their emotions and fears and apprehensions of ‘not knowing what will happen,’ but the invariable outcome is that the author does know what happens, because they both have lived it and returned to write about it. As a result of this, the knowledge of return becomes manifest in the writing, in the way that the story is told, and the tricks and waves of the wand that the author will pick and choose from his toolbox of which to employ. This is not to say that while I am on the road, that I will not be employing any illusions to relate effectively my travels to the reader, but the truth is that I will not know which tricks to play, only my best guesses, and therein lies the truth of travel for which I am aiming.
I will able to accomplish this feat more by means of technological advances as opposed to literary innovation (but, perhaps after a few beers I might jokingly argue the latter). Mark Twain did not have the means to accomplish this instantaneous form of blogging, but much of The Innocents Abroad was taken from letters that Twain wrote while on his journey and were published in newspapers back in America. Furthermore, as an amateur writer, I am devoid of any financial impulses to write, wait and hoard, and sell my writing for the purpose of a book, something that Bryson clearly had and prepared for along his journeys. I am without funding, again unlike Bryson, even from my parents, so herein lies another truth to the experience ... kind of a Kerouac-ian type thing.
Another reason for my choice to break in format of my blog is perhaps a personal one. Since I commenced in this year abroad, I have kept a journal (It wasn’t until after a couple months that I thought maybe I should adapt it into a blog). Since then, I have written in it diligently, and hundreds of pages are filled with descriptions of events and thoughts I have had throughout the course of my year. But what I have found so fascinating and rewarding is (when I read it back, I haven’t yet) the notion of not knowing what lies ahead for me. There is no way for me to know, and that I feel very much mirrors the core ideals of travel, or least the travelling that I hope to engage. With the at-the-present method of posting, I hope to mirror the unknown nature of my journal and, more so, offer it to my readers, see what you guys think of it. And lastly, I feel that the journal was (had to be) the first, original form of travel writing. Think of Lewis and Clark and other explorers (which we will get into later), their journals are no doubt travel literature in perhaps its purest form. So you might say, my project is a throwback to original travelling, leading to its bastardization through modern technology at the hands of a cynical liberal-arts college English major on their year abroad. I can think of no more frightening foe.
(Ok, so I have basically covered the grounds of format of my writing, and have scratched the surface of the travel writing genre, but now it’s time to get stuck in to my thesis on travel/tourism itself.)
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