(no subject)
Growing up in Montana means being off most people's radar geographically. I grew up reading obsessively and I can still remember every book (by non-local writers) I read that mentioned Montana. There were two. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig and Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck. The only times Montana was mentioned in the news, it was bad (see Kaczynski, Theodore and the Freemen in Jordan.) It gives me the feeling, even to this day, that everywhere I go is a place forgotten or ignored. But now I am out in world and twice a month I go to one of the largest cities in the world. I have been to cities that have songs written about them. Even though some of them are on "10 places you must visit" lists, I still feel like they are forgotten. However, my impression is wrong because they keep popping up and yet when I see them mentioned I am always surprised.
It was with that feeling in mind that I read this article about Bangkok in the Old Gray Lady. Since I never read about the places I had been to growing up, I always forget what bullshit travel writing is. Most of what the author talks about was stuff I actually saw when I was in Bangkok (Patpong, National Gallery, Royal Palace, etc.) but then he mentions lunch on the river for, get this, 1000 baht for two people, our paths diverge. That is only about $30USD but in Thailand that amount of money goes a long way. (When we were there we paid 250 baht a night for our room and usually ate lunch for less than 100 baht, together.) It is at this point that I realized that though the author and I saw the same city, we did not see the same Bangkok. (He did not go see the most interesting place in Bangkok either, the forensics museum. All the bullet-riddled skulls, traffic-accident-damaged brains and mummified rapists you would ever want to see.) By the end when he talks about hotels that are almost $300 a night, I am reminded again what a farce travel writing is.
Maybe this is what allows my to 'believe' in Literature as much as I do; growing up in a place that was not mentioned much allowed me to overlook the conceits involved in writing. It is easy to think that constructedness, which is such an essential feature of fiction, does not only apply to non-fiction, but as travel writing shows, it is prominent in non-fiction as well. It is often said "write what you know" but a corollary to that is that one cannot write what one does not know. For travel writing that means what the writer can only write what the writer sees/saw. Since the joy of traveling, for me, is the joy of discovery, though I could afford to take this sort of trip, I would never want to. Maybe that is why travel writing always feels a little like coitus interruptus: it gets you excited without telling you anything. It suffers from a double-bind; it cannot tell you everything, but if it does happen to give a great insight into a place too often it forces people to see the place through the author's eyes and prevents them discovering the place for themselves. Maybe this is way I liked Hanoi so much. When I was there I had no guide and no travel books. I just walked the streets and I saw everything through my own eyes. So of all the places I have been it feels the most like "mine."