Long Die Travel Writing!

As a travel writer, it was interesting for me to learn that contemporary travel literature is now dead -- at least, according to an article by Edward Marriott in this month's Prospect magazine (U.K.). "All the paths ahead seem to have disappeared," Marriott writes. "With many younger writers of travel turning to history, biography or fiction, the genre has never felt so redundant." Marriott, who has written travel books such as The Lost Tribe and Wild Shore, goes on to tie the death of travel writing into his own career: "Looking back, I can see that the author of The Lost Tribe -- a reckless naïf I now scarcely recognize as myself -- was emblematic of the modern decline of the travel book. While the book itself continues to sell, it speaks of the moment when travel writing could go no further."

To me, Marriott's eulogy of travel writing says less about "the moment travel writing could go no further" than the tiresome redundancy of "travel literature is dead" articles. After all, scholar Nicholas Howe already declared travel writing dead in a 2001 New Republic article -- which might have been interesting and original, had journalist Sally Tisdale not already declared travel writing dead six years earlier in a Harper's article. All of these literary coroners owe a debt to Paul Fussell, whose 1980 book Abroad set the standard for the modern travel-writing post-mortem. Indeed, Marriott might have done better to declare not the death of travel writing, but the death of the travel-writing obituary -- an increasingly tiresome genre of literary criticism that says more about the critic than travel writing itself.

In Marriott's case, we discover that the death of travel writing corresponds with his own personal decision to write novels instead of travel books. He even goes so far as to plug his new novel: "My new book, The Plague Race, is a far more complex weave than a travel book could have been. There is a fictional strand, reportage, an investigation into plague in the world today. And not once, thank goodness, do 'I' come into it."

This kind of convenient coincidence is a standard fixture of the "travel writing is dead" essay. Howe's travel-writing obituary in the New Republic, for example, endorsed "the abnegation of self in favor of place" -- which was a rather tidy thesis, since it was eventually revealed that Howe himself was "working on a book about senses of place in the contemporary world". In saying that travel literature is "finished", it would appear that critics are simply grousing about how contemporary travel writing has failed to reflect their own interests.

Thus, when Marriott says that the best travel writers are no longer writing about travel, he is really saying, "I am no longer writing about travel." Since Marriott has rhetorically rejected the use of "I", however, all of his conclusions are cloaked in "we" statements (this is, in fact, another fixture of the travel-writing obituary: wringing one's hands over the "egocentric" use of "I", while egoistically telling readers of how "we" live). "We really have ceased to dream of 'the world wide open before us,'" he declares at one point. "We appear to dream of very little."

But a quick look at Marriott's travel books would seem to indicate that Marriott himself has invested rather too much time into dreaming -- and not enough time into traveling. The Lost Tribe, for instance, is an engrossing tale, but it documents a mere two-week journey in the Papua New Guinea backcountry (and the fact that Marriott had a book contract before he ever made contact with his "lost tribe" is telling). Marriott's second book, Wild Shore, offers up fascinating information on sharks (as well as Nicaraguan history and politics), yet we eventually discover that Marriott spotted only three sharks during Nicaragua sojourn. Both books obviously owe far more to imagination -- creative storytelling and the implementation of library research -- than "the world wide open before us".

And it is in overlooking such contradictions that Marriott bungles his thesis. The problem with travel writing is not that the postmodern world is better captured in novels; the problem with travel writing is that too many writers (Marriott being a prime case in point) travel as scholars or authors instead of wanderers. Book contracts already in hand, their journeys exist as research-projects for editor-approved theses. Thus, just as critics know everything about literature except how to enjoy it, travel writers of Marriott's ilk overlook the joys and serendipities that come with travel for travel's sake.

That's why it's hard to take Marriott seriously when he tells us that "an uncertain global picture is best mirrored in [non-travel] literature." After all, a more courageous writer (and traveler) would know that an uncertain world is best mirrored by writers bold enough to embrace uncertainty on the road: writers who travel without a thesis, and are determined not to let the narrow parameters of their next book block their view of the world.