Notes on Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel

I recently finished reading Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel — a book I’d been meaning to read ever since I first heard about it. I’d been curious about the book because de Botton is a respected critic, but also because it sounded quite similar in spirit to what I was getting at in Vagabonding. In an interview with Don George of Lonely Planet, de Botton said that his book’s best-selling popularity suggested that there is a desire by people to reconsider the act of travel. “It suggests that a lot of people may be confused about travel,” he said. “Not from a practical point of view, but from what one could call a psychological point of view, i.e., why does one do this strange thing called travel. The reaction to the book seems to suggest that, however easy travel has become materially, the process remains challenging at a mental level.” To me, this sounded a lot like a central task of the Vagabonding book, which was to point out how travel awareness and attitude are the most important tools you can take on the road. Unlike Vagabonding, The Art of Travel does not integrate its philosophical side with practical information, but its rather scholarly approach gives one plenty to think about.

De Botton divides his meditations on travel into five sections: Departure, Motives, Landscape, Art, and Return. He might have done well to add “People” to that equation — and that is my one misgiving about his book: for all his rumination on art and consciousness, he proves himself a rather bookish, introverted traveler. In Barbados, he sits with his girlfriend at a beach resort and passively compares the experience to his travel-brochure fantasies. In Madrid, he confesses a lethargic unwillingness to get out and see the sights. There is an honesty in this approach — all of us really do struggle with anticipation versus reality, as well as tourist overload — but it would have been nice if de Botton had gotten out of his shell (and his library) and included local interactions in his ruminations. Thus, we read how the art of Edward Hopper illuminates travel service-zones, but we aren’t illuminated by the kinds of everyday people who use these travel zones; William Wordsworth is conjured to illustrate England’s Lake District, but we never meet or even consider any modern-day inhabitants. The closest we get to actual people is when, in one of the best chapters, de Botton channels Gustave Flaubert’s Egypt journey to illustrate the lure of the exotic.

Lack of interaction (and adventure) notwithstanding, however, de Botton does a great job of illustrating the feelings and contradictions common to all travelers. His chapters on anticipation, the exotic, the sublime, and habit are particularly relevant. De Botton also has a talent for the well-turned phrase, and thus I will be blogging quotes from his various chapters all this week.