incorporating writing Issue 4 Vol 2 TRAVEL Benedict Allen - Daljit Nagra - Robert Steinbeck Incorporating Writing Contents (ISSN 1743-0380) Editorial Team Page Editorial Managing Editor Travel 3 Andrew Oldham Andrew Oldham discusses all things Travel and the nagging question: Are we there yet? Interviews Editor Sarah Hesketh Interviews Benedict Allen 14 Articles Editor Sarah Hesketh meets the great explorer. Fiona Ferguson Daljit Nagra 32 Reviews Editor Sarah Hesketh spends time with the critical success that is... G.P.Kennedy Articles Columnists JoBurg Travels 5 Dan McTiernan, Andrew ODonnell, Tom Spurling tackles travel writing and the Dave Wood, Sharon Sadle. South African city. Contributors Here Be Monsters 8 Janet Aspey, Katherine Blair, Claire Ben Felsenburg looks at the eco-crisis Boot, Caroline Drennan, Ben hitting the travel writer. Felsenburg, Cath Nichols, Helen Shay, Tom Spurling Childe Harolds Ticket to Ride 24 Caroline Drennan looks at the restless Cover Art nature of Byron. Gemma Cumming Steinbecks Travelogue of War 44 Design Claire Boot looks at Steinbeck at War. Marsh Contact Details Columns http://www.incorporatingwriting.co.uk Dislocation, Dislocation 11 [email protected] Dan McTiernan discovers one doesnt have to travel to be lost. Cubicle Escapee 22 Sharon Sadle tries to relax. Artwork Incorporating Writing is an imprint of The Incwriters Society (UK). The magazine is managed by an editorial Perfect Eye 28 team independent of The Societys Constitution. Nothing in this magazine may be reproduced in whole or part without Cover artist, Gemma Cumming, exhibits permission of the publishers. We cannot accept responsi- some of her work. bility for unsolicited manuscripts, reproduction of articles, photographs or content. Incorporating Writing has endeav- oured to ensure that all information inside the magazine is Reviews 35 correct, however prices and details are subject to change. Individual contributors indemnify Incorporating Writing, The Incwriters Society (UK) against copyright claims, monetary claims, tax payments / NI contributions, or any News and Opportunities 48 other claims. This magazine is produced in the UK. © The Incwriters Society (UK) 2005 3 incorporating writing Are we there yet? Editorial by Andrew Oldham and reading equally bad literature? And felt good about it? Openly braggedabout fucking up the country you holidayed in? And we all do it, we go to gems hidden amongst the lapping waves of some undiscovered place. These solitary hideaways where we find ourselves, find peace, discover beauty and feel at one with the world. And, a fortnight after returning home, we have told all our friends, family, colleagues, lovers and any I abhor travel. Maybe that is a little passing stranger or old school friend what harsh but trust me when youve landed a great place weve just holidayed in. sideways in an air plane at OHare, What do they do? They go there! The buffeted by one of the worst hurricanes cheek. The sheer bravado! What happens the USA has ever seen, it tends to put then? They tell all their friends, family, you off the act of travelling. I love to go colleagues, acquaintances of their pets places though, so I am in a Catch 22 about a great place theyve just been situation. Many of us now baulk as we too. Oh, the beaches! Oh, the people! The face the new guru catch word - carbon culture, the food, the warmth! - LOOK AT footprint; a catchphrase dreamt up in OUR TANS - and what happens then? some PR company, to make us all feel They go! And then more people go there, guilty that the planet is indeed warming then actually live there. Four years later, up, whilst human compassion, trust and you meet the first person you love amongst fellow men and women is recommended the gem to and say quite distinctly dropping down the temperature calmly and in that innocent voice, I went scale. Lets face it, were stuffed. back on holiday there, but I wouldnt go again - its so commercial, theres no So, how big is your carbon footprint? Is it culture left. There was even a burger bar so big that you can now actively brag to next to a temple! The people have sold male friends about it? Is it big enough to out make even China go weak at the knees? Lets face it, this is how the whole travel What do you expect? You waved great problem is being pitched at us - we are fistfuls of dirty money in their faces. Sure, being made to feel incredibly stupid and beauty is wonderful, empty tranquil guilty but there is no real mention of the beaches that stretch off to the blue companies that are also to blame or even horizon are great but you dont live there the governments. all the time. You dont realise how poor some of these countries are and how Yet, our lust for travel and the throwaway much the humble tourist has them over a lifestyle is contagious. Come on, who barrel. Money or poverty? Money or hasnt amongst you told friends that you starvation? The irony is though, that went to somewhere warm and sat by the England too is becoming a tourist trap. pool for a fortnight, drinking bad wine Its the fastest growing market in the UK incorporating writing 4 at the moment. Will we adapt though to being the ones accepting the money and bending backwards over a barrel to do it? Could we, after so many decades of package holidays, shouting for food in slow and clear English in the Costa del Sol, Lyon, Delhi, Rhodes and Paris actually welcome the same back? Package holidays are coming back to roost, and I wait with baited breath for the first Spanish Man to shout slow and clear in some greasy spoon, in Spanish of course, that he wants paella. What do you expect? You waved great fistfuls of dirty money in their faces In this issue, the great and good of travel explore their own times abroad. Benedict Allen explains the need for exploration over travel, Daljit Nagra speaks of travel in the UK. We look at Byron abroad, at eco-travel and the mighty carbon footprint (it does sound like a heavyset smoker with a neverending supply of fags CALL FOR WRITERS in his mouth), the jewel of South Africa Incorporating Writing will go quarterly in and the hidden mess kept away from the 2007. Themes for 2007 include tourists and we look at Steinbeck at War - REGIONAL REVOLUTION (July) and FOOD even this became a travelogue. Dan (October). Guidelines can be obtained McTiernan and Sharon Sadle look at the from the editors below act of dislocation and relaxation respectively. Gemma Cumming shows us All enquiries and deadline details are the beautiful side of postcards in Perfect available from: Eye. Bon voyage! Comprende mush? Andrew Oldham (Managing Editor) [email protected] Fiona Ferguson (Articles Editor) [email protected] Andrew Oldham is the Managing Editor of G.P. Kennedy (Reviews Editor) Incorporating Writing. He is an award winning [email protected] writer and academic. His work includes papers on Ray Bradbury, BBC Radio and TV programmes, www.incorporatingwriting.co.uk music and literary journalism and several collections of poetry. He recently won a NW Vision award. 5 incorporating writing Joburg Travels Article by Tom Spurling Writing about our own travels is no stations, lots of misread maps - and use to those who choose to run away. But partly because its half-human to wonder. we all write and travel for different But who really wants to know about other reasons. Mark Twain travelled to pay off people in whom they cannot recognise his debts, Paul Theroux travelled to pay themselves? Who really wants to travel off his novels, Evelyn Waugh travelled to for a living? appease his own neo-colonial guilt, but perhaps its more like Bruce Chatwyn So what to do, us travellers, us writers? once said, and most of us travel cos we Travel and writing may be somewhat can. spiritual pursuits, but Travel Writing alone is strictly business. To travel alone is Ubuntu is a term used to describe more lonesome than writing, but group African humanism. It means that were all travel is mostly pretend. Perhaps we connected, all the time, no matter how should pack it in altogether in pursuit of far we roam, no matter how spicy we like peace of mind? Well, funnily enough, its our chicken (local flavour is crucial to not likely to happen in this world of cheap good travel writing). Travel writers often travel and paid writing because most of espouse universal ubuntu. They us arent nearly good enough at either to encourage us to see the world in stop - or we still have something half miniature, to see our own lives as exotic. decent to say, somewhere half decent to This is partly because travel is often dull go - and many of us still stubbornly cling and frustrating - lots of waiting in train to a life where one can fund the other. incorporating writing 6 The travel in this writing takes place in together inside. Here its the Johannesburg, or Jozi, the old, gold, Mozambicans climbing through your abused boom town gone bust. Jozi hits window, Trish said. In Botswana, its the the pits hard and rises high around the Zimbabweans. edges. Shes a daylight city, a grit-and- bare-it city, and anyones after dark. Travel writing will always take you away, Travel writing is not always romantic. Jozi unexpectedly. Second time round the is where this travel writer starts, in an clock we wake at noon Melbourne time, airport hotel with no shower. Hes strung but still in Jozi, pitch black with cats and out halfway across the Indian Ocean, with robbers.