A New Way of Seeing: Exploring the Role of Home and Self in Travel and Travel Writing
Elizabeth Pearson
“No, gracias.” That was my refrain, always on Granada, nowhere and everywhere, waiting for the tip of the tongue, ready to burst forth at the their next target. slightest provocation. No eye contact, a small but I was determined to not get tricked into a firm shake of the head, a purposeful step, marred gypsy encounter. My husband’s and my purpose only by my natural bounce. It was almost second for these three days in Granada was to fulfill a nature now, very similar to the response you give lifelong dream of mine, to see the Alhambra and to the kiosk attendants in the mall, its palace complex. The complex is a mass of except in the case of the kiosk people, they only gorgeous contradictions from the never-ending chase you so far. The Ewok key chains, special muqarnas dome in the Alhambra and the exfoliating Dead Sea salt, and electronic meticulously wild gardens of paradise in the cigarettes are too precious to leave unattended Generalife Palace to the hulking Charles V for too long. The gypsies will chase you down palace and the lovely and subtle nods to Debussy the hill, around the corner, over the river and and Washington Irving.Tip: When visiting the through the woods to grandmother’s house if Alhambra, do not linger at the Washington Irving need be. Statue. It says two things about you: Gullible I knew this going in, of course. Granada American. As we investigated the statue, a strong is home of the shock-and-awe gypsy attack. claw grabbed my arm and swung me around to Clutching their bundles of rosemary, the ladies face a Miriam Margoles look-alike with a hawk fortunes and blessings on each corner beatific smile and several sprigs of while the men engage in increasingly odd rosemary.“¡Que bella!” she exclaimed.In the performance art, from the mime hanging by his beauty of the place, I had let my guard down. suspenders from the cathedral’s wrought-iron “¿Casados? Bueno, denme su mano.” Pressing fence to the grown man pretending to be a rosemary into both our hands, she held onto mine shrieking baby in a stroller in the town square, with a vise-like grip. “¡Ah, bueno!¿Aquí? Dice sounding more like a mockingbird’s shrill que tendras una vida muy larga y con buena imitation of an irritated kitten than a human salud.¡Y con mucho amor!Pero solo amaras a child. The gypsies are the street people of una persona…a él!” Our gypsy was delighted with the fortune she was divining from my palm. Exploring the Role of Home and Self in Travel and Travel Writing 72
She made a grab for Michel’s hand, turning his expression from one of confusion to one of alarm. I wasn’t translating for him in an attempt to extricate ourselves from the situation as Travel writing has been around as long as quickly as possible, and he had no idea what was humans have been traveling and telling stories happening. “¡Oh, que bueno!”she exclaimed. about it, from Pausanias’s Descriptions of Greece “Tendrán tres hijos.” Her hand shot out and in the second century CE and Petrarch’s account patted my stomach before I could jerk away. of his trip up Mount Ventoux in 1336 to Samuel “Dos hijos muy fuertes como él,” she caressed Johnson’s 18th-century account of his trip to the Michel’s arm, “y una hija con pelo largo como Hebrides and modern writers like Paul Theroux, tú.” Walkers, both Spanish and tourists alike, Bill Bryson, and Joan Didion. However, the hurried by, some chuckling and shaking their proper approach to traveling and travel writing head as they passed. I smiled frigidly back, has oft been debated. The account could be a lens incensed that they did not realize how lucky they through which the reader experiences a new were that we were taking one for the team. place or people, the author almost non-existent except as the holder of the lens. The account I snapped out of my reverie as Michel’s could be all about the author and his or her panicked voice reached my ears. “I’m sorry?” he thoughts, feelings, self-realizations, and growth, stammered. “Dime,” our gypsy ordered in a the visited local just an afterthought, a backdrop grandmotherly but firm voice, her long fingers on which to enact the author’s emotional journey. patting Michel’s pocket. “What? I don’t know. I Or it could be a combination of the two, perhaps don’t know!” Michel stuttered. “Money. She a failed attempt at being objective and wants money. Give her the coins in your pocket.” documentary or a carefully balanced look at a She looked at me expectantly, pleased I new place through a specific and acknowledged understood the situation. He thrust the coins into personal experience. No matter what the form, her hand, and she shook her head patiently. “No. though, the author’s experiences in their home, Papel.” Michel’s relief turned again to alarm, but whether with their family, hometown, or home I stepped in. “No, lo siento, pero no tenemos country, are just as important in understanding papel ahora. Este es todo el dinero.” She knew as experiences abroad as the actual experiences well as I did that we had plenty of bills between abroad themselves. As such, people present Michel and I. Her attention shifted to Michel themselves a certain way when traveling abroad again and made the same request for paper based on how they see themselves at home: as money. “No, no, we don’t have any. Sorry,” he traveler or tourist; open-minded or a know-it-all, insisted, having correctly picked up on my an observer or an action person; a confident decline of her previous request. “No. Cuesta explorer or a timid internalizer; and all shades in vente. Diez para ella, diez para ti.” Twenty euros between. for unwanted palm readings? She must be joking. I repeated myself again, and she sighed In this essay, I explore the importance of resignedly. “Bueno.” She took back half of our home in the current critical discussion on travel sprigs of rosemary, blessed me with the sign of and travel writing, examining writers and styles the cross, and patted Michel’s cheek. As we like Zoë Brân’s documentary approach, Michael hurried off, I explained to Michel what just Mershaw’s balance between experience and happened. He laughed. “Well, at least she didn’t documenting, and a round-table discussion lead curse us. She only took away half our blessing.” by Robert Root that discusses travel writing as
Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.2 (Spring 2012) Exploring the Role of Home and Self in Travel and Travel Writing 73
personal memoir. I then analyze writings by subjects, to tell their stories as honestly and Samuel Johnson and Maureen Dowd as two truthfully as possible. But how to do that, to examples of how home directly affects the uphold her duty, is tricky. author’s self-presentation and travel account; and It seems that how the author approaches travel apply some of my findings to my own travel writing and upholds the duty to reader and writing about my husband’s and my time in subject really depends on how the author defines Spain during the summer of 2011. I argue that his or her work. For example, Michelle Moreno acknowledging ones home and experiences there defines travel narrative as a “subset of personal is imperative to understanding one’s self- storytelling…one of the many lenses through presentation abroad and how that affects the which we examine experience and shape stories” experiences one allows oneself to have. Finally, I (Root 80), while Zoë Brân claims that for her, argue that the idea of traveling to improve one’s “the most accomplished travel writers reveal the home, promoted by both Johnson and modern world through their eyes whilst keeping travel writer Rick Steves, is an insightful though themselves more or less in the background… admittedly difficult approach to travel. their personality is expressed in how they write and what they choose to write about, not through autobiography” (Brân 163). Brân’s preferred documentary style is an intriguing idea, the author simply holding the lens through which the Returning to the grounding for this reader views the travel narrative as analysis of home and self in travel writing—my unencumbered by the author’s experience as own experiences—I travel to learn, to see things possible. She notes that as she would rather read in actuality that I’ve only seen in pictures, to about a place or culture than the author moving experience new places and people, to learn about about or interacting with that place or culture, myself. I write to learn, to synthesize those she assumes her reader does, too, and writes experiences, to remember those new places and accordingly. However she also acknowledges people, to understand what I learned about that some writers are criticized for being to myself, and, perhaps, teach others. But what is remote from their own story, and “it is necessary the duty of the travel writer to his or her readers? to have some kind of balance between presence Clearly, my own reasons for traveling and and absence” (Brân 163). It seems that Brân says writing are selfish, the goal, as Michael this with a twinge of frustration or regret that she Mewshaw says, for each writer is the same must cater to her audience’s taste and not simply —“insight, joy, euphony, vivid experience, visual write a purely documentary account of a country. excitement, sensuous delight, and discovery” Yet even in a documentary, the viewer sees what (Mewshaw 9). It is all about the author. As the the documentarian wants them to see. “We are author crafts the narrative she wishes to tell, shaped by where we are,” and that “where” however, the author must fulfill her duty to her includes our home and home experiences audience, which is to attempt to teach them (Mewshaw 9). Therefore, even if Brân was able something about this place and people, to to expunge herself from her travel account, her provide them a glimpse into the world she was own background, experiences, and prejudices allowed to visit or even inhabit for the time from home will influence the choices she makes being. She must also uphold her duty to her in framing her documentary. It will still be a
Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.2 (Spring 2012) Exploring the Role of Home and Self in Travel and Travel Writing 74
documentary created by and seen through a very community of learning, with the whole of man specific experiential lens. and nature for its object, and all human enterprise and improvement depending on it” (Levi 21). Understanding the author’s lens is key to However, unlike Brân’s purely documentary understanding both their approach to writing and approach, Johnson valued the commentary and travel. Authors who travel and write through a discussion on learning as well as the subject more personal memoir-type lens, as does Moreno learned, though he did not quite go so far into and, as we will see, Dowd, create knowledge of a personal storytelling as Moreno advocates. Peter place, culture, and people as they relate to the Levi calls Johnson “a sharp observer of the real individual traveler/writer. Perhaps one of the shape of things… [but] his ideal is to make a most popular examples of this lens in recent series of sternly objective verbal models of times is Elizabeth Gilbert’s self-indulgent Eat reality: they are meant to be unambiguous” (13). Pray Love; rather than learning about the various Interestingly though, or maybe not so, Johnson’s cultures of Italy, India, and Bali, we learn about observations, commentary, and even itinerary what Gilbert thinks these cultures can do for her were anything but objective and heavily on her journey of selfhood and her misadventures influenced by his experiences, upbringing, and in trying to actualize these benefits. If used well, encounters from his home of London, England. however, as Bill Bryson does in several of his books, including In a Sunburned Country about In the introduction to his edition of Johnson his time in Australia, authors can use their and his travel companion Boswell’s accounts of experiences to highlight cultural similarities and their travels in Scotland, Levi notes that British differences, comment on travel and the role of travel writing and tome-like country histories the traveler in general and specifically in that were already popular in late 18th century place, and ultimately teach their audiences quite England. Areas from the Lake District to Ireland a bit about the place, culture, and people were being explored and written about for public themselves. As mentioned earlier, a documentary consumption. Perhaps the most influential work lens attempts to teach the same kinds of things as for Johnson’s own travel writings was Thomas’ a personal memoir lens, but the creation of Pennant’s Tour in Scotland 1769. Pennant’s knowledge is further separated from the exhaustively thorough account set a new individual traveler/writer. standard in British travel writing, elevating the genre above the previous works of Addison, The documentary style and the lens it creates Smollett, and Sterne, through his close is a historically popular form of travel writing observations and attention to detail. Levi quotes and was, in fact, part of Samuel Johnson’s Johnson as saying of Pennant, “He’s the best approach during his trip to Scotland in 1773. traveler I ever read; he observes more things that Paul Fussell writes that “before the development anyone else does” (Levi 14). Johnson appreciated for tourism, travel was conceived to be like Pennant’s approach to travel for it mirrored his study, and its fruits were considered to be the own: to study and learn about people, places, and adornment of the mind and the formation of the especially nature that needed clearer definition judgment. The traveler was a student of what he and to be more deeply understood. sought” (Fussell 39). Johnson certainly traveled to study and document what he learned for the Johnson did not travel to Scotland blindly, reading public of 18th century England. Johnson though. While Pennant’s work was certainly a “believed utterly in the republic of letters, the standard Johnson hoped to surpass in his own
Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.2 (Spring 2012) Exploring the Role of Home and Self in Travel and Travel Writing 75
travel writing, Martin Martin’s Description of the Inherently, the preparation and the end result are Western Islands of Scotland (1703) was the work colored by home and so are the experiences that actually formed his ideas of the wild, savage, during the travel. A perfect example of this romantic Scotland he envisioned as a boy. Martin is Johnson’s disappointment at the realities of depicts an ancient way of life, all but gone by native Highlander life. By 1700 the Highlands Johnson’s trip, that provoked great curiosity in and the Lowlands of Scotland were increasingly Johnson. Many of the topics Johnson covers in separated. The Lowlanders were rapidly his account are topics drawn from Martin, converting to John Knox’s Presbyterianism, notably “the happiness and health of the moving toward a more agricultural economy, and islanders, the question of second sight, natural dropping their native language in favor of economy, antiquities, orchards and trees, whisky, English. The major cities of Glasgow and language, dress, architecture, religion and Edinburgh “were beginning to exhibit all the education” (Levi 16), among others. This sort of characteristics of ‘polite’ commercial society” as advanced preparation is an aspect of travel that defined by their “civilized” neighbors to the Johnson feels invaluable, saying in a letter to south (Herman 109). The Highlanders, on the Joseph Baretti, “He that knows which was to other hand, maintained the clan system and direct his view sees much in a little time” therefore clung tightly to their old Catholic (Johnson Letters 135). Additionally, once the beliefs or converted with the many of the traveler finally embarks on his or her journey, the chieftains to Episcopalianism, stuck to the traveler must actively seek out those who can shepherding life, and firmly held on to the Scots increase and improve upon the knowledge Gaelic language. In the most remote parts of already gleaned by the traveler from his or her northern Scotland and the Western isles, the most advance study and immediately commit to paper primitive hunter-gatherer cultures still existed, what is learned. Thus, Johnson’s personal use for surviving off of fishing and gathering in their traveling, as he told his friend and correspondent, tiny huts on the inhospitable rocky coast. Mrs. Thrale, is “to regulate imagination by This reality hardly matched Johnson’s reality, and instead of thinking how things may romantic ideal of the daring, rebellious clan be, to see them as they are” (Johnson Letters leaders, fighting for their land and their culture, 359). the “noble savage” applied to the Highlands. That is easier said than done. Thomas Johnson’s nostalgia for this wild, barbaric past is Jemielity attributes this desire for knowledge evident in his discussion of the black stones regarding the outside world, or the world outside supposedly used by the Highland chiefs to make Johnson’s own, to a desire to create a sounder contracts and alliances. He describes the oath, basis for him to make his evaluations and which was considered as more sacred than judgments as a critic and qualifier of human any other obligation, and which could not be achievement and life (Jemielity 459). violated without the blackest infamy. In Additionally, advanced preparation creates those days of violence and repine, it was of images and expectations on which the traveler, in great importance to impress upon savage this case Johnson, can and will pass judgment. minds the sanctity of an oath…when they These judgments necessarily come from had established their faith by this Johnson’s own experiences at home, middle- tremendous sanction, inconstancy and upper class London in the late 18th century, against which all comparisons will be made.
Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.2 (Spring 2012) Exploring the Role of Home and Self in Travel and Travel Writing 76
treachery were no longer feared. (Johnson life is] a series of distress: where every Journey 141-142) morning is labouring for expedients for the evening; and where all mental pains or Both Johnson’s naïveté about and yearning for pleasure arose from the dread of winter, the the days of yore and his attitude of superiority expectation of spring, the caprices of their are on display in this passage. He chooses to chiefs, and the motions of the neighboring invoke this romantic image of barbaric rituals, clans; where there was neither shame from perhaps as a way to engage and thrill his ignorance, nor pride in knowledge; neither audience or to engage intellectual consideration curiosity to inquire, nor vanity to of the kinds of life outside a posh London salon, communicate…[which is] to be expected and yet distances himself and his audience from from an illiterate people. (Johnson Journey the subject by referring to the savage mind and 113) the days of violence and repine. He chooses to present himself as a scholar of human behavior, This is not the Highland life described in an expert on the needs of those more savage and Martin’s book nor is it the idealized barbarians less civilized than himself and his readers. Yet Johnson’s audience wants to read about. Ian had he not had such a specific preconceived Donaldson discusses how Johnson often notion of Scottish barbarism, formed at an early “satirizes the common human expectation that age by romantic accounts, the sense of close- life must be radically different or radically better mindedness might not be quite as pervasive as in in some other part of the world” (Donaldson comments like this one. 784), but this passage show that Johnson, despite his self-proclaimed intellectual superiority, falls Moments like this reflect the limitations to a into that same expectation himself. For all his purely documentary approach to travel and travel writing and discussion of travel, the furthest and writing and show how the author’s experiences most exotic locale Johnson ever traveled to was, play a role in forming the lens through which he in fact, Scotland. So it would make sense that he or she views travel. Johnson’s attempt to create would expect, and perhaps even hope, that an honest and realistic vicarious travel Scotland would turn out to be the wild, untamed experience of Scotland for his readers is marred land of romance and daring deeds of his by his inability to completely erase himself from childhood dreams. his account. Rather he succeeds in creating the kind of experience his readers, members of Despite his disappointment, palpable in the London’s upper-middle and upper class simple description of daily life as a series of intelligentsia, would be likely to have were they distress, Johnson strives to be the prepared to travel to Scotland themselves as their lenses observer, ready to learn and pass judgment and would be similarly formed with the same kind of presents himself as such in all his interactions at expectations, pre-knowledge, and home, in letters, and while traveling. His disappointments. discussion reflects a keen observation of the human condition in the inhospitable Highlands, a Johnson’s disappointment with the realities of condition he deems simple and desperate. The Scottish life is more apparent during his trip to people do not value [educational] knowledge, Col. He acknowledges that the life curiosity, or communication (or discussion of of which the idea had delighted our topics of intellectual interest) because those imagination [no longer exists]…[and daily intellectual pursuits have no value in the kind of
Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.2 (Spring 2012) Exploring the Role of Home and Self in Travel and Travel Writing 77
life they lead. They do not know what they lack His home and how he presents himself at home is in terms of intellectual stimulation, so there is no so integral to who he is that the lens through shame for lack of knowledge. Despite his which we see Scotland in his Journey is, objective tone, this bothers Johnson or he would “Scotland as Presented by the Life Experiences not have specifically mentioned these intellectual of Samuel Johnson.” There are moments of pure and educational deficiencies. He may be trying to and heartbreaking truth, beauty, and humanity, see the reality as it is, but his writings imply that but there are also moments where the reality he this reality is less than the reality of civilized and sees is not the reality as it is, despite what he engaging London society. It is no wonder that writes to Mrs. Thrale. Johnson said to his friend and travel companion, Though Johnson claims objectivity as his James Boswell, “The noblest prospect which a stated goal, he seems unable to avoid viewing the Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads country and people of Scotland through a lens him to England!” (Boswell 129). For England, formed by constant, if implicit, comparisons and specifically London, is against what Johnson between the Highlands and London, depicting a judges everything. people “without the trappings of European Samuel Johnson said in his account of his trip civilization” (Lindsay 1), objectifying both the to Scotland, “All travel has its advantages. If the country and its people. Johnson writes through traveler visits better countries, he may learn to the lens of the educated, cultured, and moneyed improve his own, and if fortune carries him to 18th century Londoner; the knowledge he creates worse, he may learn to enjoy it” (Johnson is the knowledge of Scotland not as the land of Journey 133). However, it is one thing to say this the wild, rugged, and romantic Highland chief and another to put it into practice. Johnson is but as the land of the impoverished noble savage well recorded in his desire to travel to learn about whose nobility comes from his simple yet other places, chronicle that knowledge, and then dogged attempt to eke out a life in such an comment upon it. Certainly, he would approve of inhospitable place. Johnson achieves his goal of the general idea of Zoë Brân’s documentary continuing the intellectual discussion of approach to travel in that she, too, strives to learn Scotland, but it comes at the price of viewing the as much new knowledge about a place and land and people through the lens of Johnson’s people and record that knowledge to share with experience rather than the reality of Scotland others. This act of sharing knowledge is his way itself. of improving his home through his travels. But Johnson’s desire to use that knowledge in the continuing and evolving conversation of intellectual ideas that pervaded 18th century We still live in an information age, though our London inherently forces his actual travel and information, more subjective than ever, whips writings to be subjective rather than objective. around us in a glut of 24-hour news cycles, He is too influenced by his lifetime readings, his newspapers, magazines, e-mails, the Internet, personal and professional acquaintances, his Facebook, Twitter, text message, movies, and constant writing and communication, his television rather than the 18th century’s constant upbringing and adult life in London society, and exchange of letter, pamphlets, books, and his own sense of intellectual superiority to fully lectures. Many feel that Western civilization still achieve the objective, documentary style of reigns at the epitome of civilized culture, though travel writing of which he seemingly approves.
Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.2 (Spring 2012) Exploring the Role of Home and Self in Travel and Travel Writing 78
the epicenter has shifted from London to New with the righteousness of 18th century British York and many Asian cities are starting to take imperialism enveloping him as he explored that the place of London and New York as cultural barbaric area known as Scotland. Maureen Dowd and financial capitols. There is still a sense of reveals a similar sense of American arrogant entitlement that comes with being a citizen of a righteousness through her journeys in Saudi self-described most cultured, elite, and powerful Arabia in 2011, expressing opinions of Saudi nation. The difference, though, is that many more female subjugation that both thrill and terrify her people of all backgrounds are traveling and even readers with their sheer brazenness. Johnson at writing about it. least attempts to put his philosophy into action, writing about his travels as a way to continue the As our world grows increasingly smaller conversation regarding Scotland and current through faster technology and increased travel, it matters among London’s social elite and is no longer enough to take a documentary intelligentsia. Dowd, on the other hand, seems to approach to travel and travel writing. Rick take the approach that her home, customs, and Steves, one of the U.S.’s more popular travel way of life are what can improve the places to guides and writers, approaches travel as a which she travels. political act, “to have enlightening experiences, to meet inspirational people, to be stimulated, to Dowd, the New York Times’ only female op-ed learn, to grow” (vii). Yet Steves, taking a page columnist, is a legend in the field of journalism. from Samuel Johnson, argues that we must not She has covered and eviscerated presidents and just experience other cultures, but use those their staff for years, won the 1999 Pulitzer for experiences to turn an eye toward our own distinguished commentary for her coverage of culture in an effort to find ways to improve our President Clinton’s impeachment trail, and has home. Speaking from the position of a U.S. won legions of fans and enemies through the citizen writing mainly for other U.S. citizens he years. Much of her work deals with gender says, “Holding our country to a high-standard relations, both playing with and upending and searching for ways to better live up to its traditional (if antiquated) binaries of female lofty ideals is not ‘America-bashing.’ It is good beauty and sex versus male intelligence and citizenship….By learning from our travels and power. She rejects the anti-feminine feminism bringing these ideals home, we can make our and revels in her femininity but “bristles at the nation even stronger” (viii). In this way travel suggestion that she’s used her feminine wiles to becomes a political act, an act of both enjoyment get information” (Levy 5). She claims she lives and progress for the open-minded, thinking according to the Carole Lombard philosophy: “I citizen. It is an important and progressive live by a man’s code, designed to fit a man’s approach for American travelers in a post-9/11 world, yet at the same time I never forget that a world. woman’s first job is to choose the right shade of lipstick” (Levy 7). Additionally, acknowledging the role the idea of home plays in our travels can both ease and If Dowd sounds like a character, it is perhaps complicate travelers’ relationships with their because she is. Ariel Levy’s profile of her in New destinations, and often people’s experiences at York Magazine discusses how she not only home, most often their country of origin, dictate writes as her persona, something she was often how they experience a new place, people, and criticized for as a reporter, but also lives as her culture. Samuel Johnson, for example, traveled persona. One friend describes how she’s created
Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.2 (Spring 2012) Exploring the Role of Home and Self in Travel and Travel Writing 79
a “character called Maureen Dowd who is differences between gender roles and social dazzlingly glamorous” (Levy 11), while Levy attitudes in the two countries as seen through says, “she’s created her own reality— Dowd’s value judgments and qualifications. Dowdworld—and we just live in it” (Levy 7). These qualifications of Saudi culture and Dowd’s “A Girl’s Guide to Saudi Arabia,” customs are constant in Dowd’s piece. Dowd originally published in the August 2010 issue of describes how “Saudis fret that the rest of the Vanity Fair, certainly reflects Dowdworld in world sees them as aliens, even though many are many ways. The piece focuses on binaries exceptionally charming and welcoming once you prevalent in Dowd’s other writings: women vs. actually breech the wall” (58), but in the next men, Western civilization vs. Middle Eastern sentence further describing Saudi sensitivity to non-civilization, new vs. old. The world Dowd the world’s view, qualifies their ways as writes of is much smaller and more connected “Flintstone” and later calls the rate of social than Johnson’s; the wilds of Scotland a few progress “akin to a snail on Ambien” (58), hundred miles away from London have been justifying that sensitivity with her own replaced by the arid deserts of the Middle East, judgments. These small asides and off-hand half a world away and yet intimately close. The descriptions might seem inadvertent if they were binaries of us-vs.-them are both simplified yet not an integral part of her writing style. Through increasingly complex at the same time. Though these qualifications, Dowd is inferring a lesser the physical and cultural differences are much status on The Kingdom as compared to the more obvious, they are complicated by a barrage forward-thinking ways of the United States and of politics, news media, diplomacy or lack-there- its cultural compatriots. of, and the mass of binaries present within Saudi The most interesting part of the essay is culture itself. Dowd focuses mainly on the binary Dowd’s professed determination see how much of Saudi men versus all women, utilizing her lens bending of the rules she, as an American woman, of a successful woman in a man’s career to could get away with. “At various establishments generate knowledge designed, perhaps, to spark I began amusing myself by seeing how long it indignation among her liberated, modern female took for male Cerberuses to dart forward and readers. She describes Saudi men as “often block the way to the front sections reserved for reflexively say[ing], ‘No, no, no’—‘La, la, la!’— men,” she writes (61). She describes waiters to women because it’s the safer answer” (Dowd refusing to serve her already ordered coffee until 68) and giving what she calls “The Smile…of she stepped back into the female section or even sweet exasperation…It translated into, ‘No f— engaging in a “Reggie Bush run” to stop a ing way, lady’” (55). Women, on the other hand, woman from sitting in the male section. Hotel are “legally, sexually, and sartorially [buried] desk clerks chide her to put on her abaya and alive” (55), “wander zombie-like” through prevent another female journalist from entering segregated shopping mall, and are even the gym, and rent-a-car men refuse to let her rent sometimes shown off to potential mothers-in-law, a car without renting a male driver as well. She who have matchmakers “look under the hood and enlists a friend to stage “a brief sit-in at the kick the tires of the bride-to-be” (64) at events men’s section of Starbucks in the upscale that sound suspiciously similar to the livestock Kingdom Centre Mall” and sneaks a young Saudi show at the Houston Rodeo, according to man up to her hotel room to translate the Dowd’s description. Such examples, no matter television news and talk shows for her (61). how wittily described, pointedly reinforce the
Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.2 (Spring 2012) Exploring the Role of Home and Self in Travel and Travel Writing 80
Dowd also describes the paranoia that arises probably won’t get around to it for another from the potential of unknowingly making century.” She turns Saudi Arabia into a joke, mistakes that could send you to Deera Square or something “funny,” because she doesn’t bother to Chop Chop Square; “It’s the one with the big investigate why it is such a restrictive country, drain, which the Saudis claim is for rain” (62). what it is being done to move forward from that restriction, and why there is resistance. It is a It is in these moments that what is implicit in surprisingly superficial piece for one who prides her constant qualifications is made explicit: herself on getting to the heart of the matter in her though Dowd’s personal goals remain unclear, journalism. Dowd views Saudi Arabia one of her piece chooses to reveal Saudi Arabia through Johnson’s places “worse” than home, but rather her own experience as a place that is “less than” than learning from and enjoying it, she chooses her home. She wishes to impose her home, her to view its supposed backwardness and customs, what she thinks society should be on inferiority through her own lens of rules, this country. Whether or not Saudi culture is customs, standards, and self-righteousness. And good or right is beside the point, as “good” and in this case, the personal memoir lens of the “right” are always subjective and unable to be author is so present that it could cause the readers judged from a broad standpoint without being an to distrust both the place and people being ideological value judgment. Rather than using written about and the lens through which the her experiences at home as a basis for viewing audience reads about them. Though clearly not and expanding her knowledge of the world, she every reader would have such a negative uses home as a basis for what is the proper way reaction, it is important to note that the to live. Her rationale, as stated in an interview on knowledge created by the lens through which this piece with NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly, is that Dowd writes is knowledge of Dowd and her Saudis think “they’re undergoing amazing, kind opinions of Saudi gender conflict rather than of radical change…but you don’t know how more truthful knowledge of Saudi Arabia and its much things have changed unless you try” internal social conflicts. (Dowd Interview). As a journalist in an increasingly globalized world, her moral Clearly the inflated sense of self that comes convictions are as her “home-base”, a 21st from traveling from a dominant world power to century version of Johnson’s “home place.” another (implicitly less than) country is Despite being formed from her US upbringing, something that has remained an integral part of Dowd’s moral grounding is a potent home lens travel writing from the 18th century to present. through which she views Saudi Arabia’s Many travelers and writers approach traveling evolution. this way, and it certainly offers a unique lens through which to view the world outside one’s The question is, though, how can one evaluate home. It seems, however, that this presentation of the change when one refuses to acknowledge the the know-it-all self with nothing to learn limits standards and rules of the place that is one’s experiences and ability to use the supposedly changing? Dowd tells Kelly, “I knowledge gained from those experiences. wanted to do a travel piece about a place you Through exploring Johnson and Dowd, it seems couldn’t travel to because the whole concept is so that traveling with a lens balanced between funny. And the Saudis are so deeply acquiring documentary knowledge and personal schizophrenic and ambivalent that, of course, experience yields a more complete travel they say they want tourists, but then they experience. We, as travelers, should recognize
Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.2 (Spring 2012) Exploring the Role of Home and Self in Travel and Travel Writing 81
that we all travel with preconceived notions and rendered, even if services were not willingly prejudices that are difficult to rid ourselves of, accepted. but, with an open mind, can lead to a richer, more Additionally, my guilty prejudice toward complete learning experience that can have more “street people,” based on my interactions with effective benefits upon returning home. the homeless and conmen pretending to be homeless on Houston’s street corners, was an inaccurate way to view this woman and her brethren. A more accurate comparison might be I tell the story of our encounter with the gypsy the buskers and street performers in the subways fortune-teller that I opened with frequently, and it of New York and the sidewalks of Covent always elicits hearty laughs and a congratulations Garden who are neither homeless nor begging for that we weren’t suckered out of more money. money. Unfortunately the name “Gitano” does But as I have been exploring the idea of how often carry a negative connotation in Southern people’s sense of home affects their self- Spain, specifically related to socio-economic presentation when traveling abroad, I keep status. Terms like “Gitano” and “quinqui” refer feeling a sense of disappointment about how I to the lowest levels of society, often with handled the situation with the woman, a part of connotations of untrustworthiness, lack of the Iberian Kale ethnic group of Romani. I let my ambition, and sometimes even a criminal preconceived notions of what Spanish Romani element. These connotations are compounded by are supposed to be and my attitude toward what I lack of stable employment and itinerant lifestyles called “street people” earlier rule my actions and with the caves of Sacromonte sometimes responses. I failed to do what I believe the replacing a physical house. Often, “Gitano” is a primary purpose and philosophy of traveling is: term of abuse, and people self-identify as Gitano to learn about our world with an open mind. in degrees, depending on how closely they fit After engaging with Steves’ philosophy of certain stereotypes. travel, I again reflected on our experience with Despite this negative aspect, it can be a good the Roma woman that day in Granada, my thing to identify proudly as Gitano in Southern reaction, and what I actually learned from that Spain. Rather than being considered foreign, interaction and the rest of our time in Granada. I Kale Romani are often considered “real” Spain in realized that my reaction to the Romani, or terms of folklore and culture. This is most Gitanos, was based on my own notions of apparent and striking in the phenomenal gypsies, gleaned primarily from Bizet’s opera Andalusian art of flamenco, and it was at a Carmen and a friend’s horror stories of her own flamenco cafe called El Gallo that I began to gypsy interaction in Turkey, and my notions of understand the complexities of Southern Spanish what I referred to earlier as “street people.” The and Gitano culture. The art of flamenco is woman was certainly not a fiery, passionate famous the world round, and Granada and gypsy dancer, intent on stealing my husband and Sevilla boast some of the most spectacular leading a gun-running operation on the side, nor performers. This is because flamenco, a highly was she willing to throw a baby at me to steal my percussive music and dance style, was influenced shopping bags. She was an entrepreneur of sorts, as much by Gitano music and dance as non- expecting reasonable payment for services Gitano Andalusian culture and many of the
Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.2 (Spring 2012) Exploring the Role of Home and Self in Travel and Travel Writing 82
instrumentalists, singers, and dancers are Gitano at home and evolved by our experiences abroad. themselves. Of course we will start with specific ideas about a place or culture, but it is the conscious effort to Flamenco is a highly respected and protected allow those ideas to change and grow that art form in Spain. As we entered the café, we defines a traveler from, say, a tourist. In travel, were told that photography and videography there is so much consideration of raindrops, and were prohibited during the performance. As it we often forget to consider the beauty of the began each dancer made an arresting entrance entire storm. down a colorfully lit staircase onto the stage, striking a dramatic pose and accompanied by the As writers, however, it is imperative we not rhythmic clapping and stomping of the forget to consider the beauty of the entire storm. musicians. The costumes were joyfully colorful, We create our own narratives through the lens of their hair slicked down into cinnamon-roll buns, our experiences, but it is necessary that we create and the electricity of anticipation enraptured the as true a narrative of the place or culture or audience. But the most shockingly exhilarating people itself and not simply the narrative of our aspect of the two-hour performance was the interactions. The complexities and multiple sides passion, pain, and primal nature of the dancing of Andalusia’s Romani Gitano culture can only and singing. The singers’ throaty, powerful be properly told if one realizes that there are not voices reminded one of a muezzin’s call-to- any true equivalents between one culture and prayer, and they poured every ounce of emotion another. The Romani street people of Granada into each note, while the dancers moved with are not the same as the homeless of Houston, and painstakingly controlled movements as if their it is the sheer force of their otherness that both inner wildness was seconds from breaking free. complicates and irrevocably binds them to their It was a privileged glimpse into a mysterious and place within Spanish society. Though my own highly historical art form. narrative of Romani interactions can illustrate various aspects of these people, my duty is to tell While attending this spectacular performance, their story honestly and completely through my I realized my mistake in interacting with the own lens. Roma fortune-teller on the path by the Alhambra was not that I approached her with my preconceived notions from my experiences at home. That was to be expected. After all, my experiences at home are my point of departure for learning about the world, the lens through which I view and create new knowledge. My mistake was in not understanding that she was part of the same culture as the regal flamenco dancers we saw at El Gallo. The Spanish Romani culture is as distinct and varied as any and weaves into the multi-cultural tapestry that creates the singular Andalusian culture. This is what Steves means and is reflected in Johnson and Dowd: as travelers we create our own narratives of the world based in our experiences
Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.2 (Spring 2012) Exploring the Role of Home and Self in Travel and Travel Writing 83
Works Cited Boswell, James. The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D. London: J. Sharpe, 1830. Web. 15 May 2011. Brân, Zoe. “A Teabag Each is Unacceptable: Respect and Representation in Travel Writing.” Studies in Travel Writing 10 (2006): 161-168. PDF. Donaldson, Ian. “Samuel Johnson and the Art of Observation.” ELH 53.4 (1986): 779-799. PDF. Dowd, Maureen. “A Girl’s Guide to Saudi Arabia.” The Best American Travel Writing 2011. Ed. Sloan Crossley. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. Print. Dowd, Maureen. Interview by Mary Louise Kelly. Morning Edition. National Public Radio. KUHF, Houston. 6 July 2010. Radio. Fussell, Paul. Abroad. New York: Oxford UP, 1980. Print. Herman, Arthur. How the Scots Invented the Modern World. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001. Print.
Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.2 (Spring 2012)