when did Travel Writing become boys-only?

I was perusing the Travel Writing section of Foyles today (because, of course, I should have been at home doing readings and preparing for a presentation) when I was struck by all the male authors. Paul Theroux, Bill Bryson, lots of dudes named David.... and I started wondering why this genre of writing -- the adventure -- is dominated by men almost to the exclusion of women.

Worse, I started thinking about the travel books I've read or encountered that have been written by women, and it donned on me they fit into a handful of Harlequin-inspired sub-categories within the travel genre. Where men's stories are all raw adventure, hiking boots in-hand, jump-on-a-boat, ride-a-motorcycle, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants deals, women's travel stories can be.... well, I was going to say "girly," but then thought better of it. Let's say, intensely focused on the self, the home, and sex.

For example, Around the World in 80 Dates? Let's call that the Sex and the City sub-category. Under the Tuscan Sun -- if the movie is anything to go by -- is a "find yourself away from it all and, cross your fingers, love too!" book. Eat, Pray, Love straddles the "find yourself" and the "find your taste buds" categories. Then you have something like Out of Africa, which rounds things out a little, but dwells less on adventure and more on the contrived and not-so-contrived differences between the writer/European audience and the "other"/African residents, tribespeople and servants.

You can see I got myself a titch worked up. Then I came home and searched through the Chapters database for "travel" and "adventure and literary travel." Things got better from there, actually. There's more of a diversity of women's writing on travel, and it isn't all of the Sand in My Bra/humour fold or the "Paris! Men! Shopping!" genre.

Still, some questions carrying forward:

Do women who write about travel slip into the natural style of women's magazine writing because that's what women want to read about? Would we prefer to read about "a woman alone in (insert country here) overcomes cultural differences" than "a woman startlingly begins hitch-hiking through the Middle East, then hops onto a train across much of Asia, a boat across the Pacific, and a motorcycle through the Canadian west coast"?

Do popular women's travel titles simply reflect a high interest in the memoirs of those who have lived "happily ever after" in our Oprah-inspired age of "buy shit, live the dream?" And what is the male counterpart to "buy shit, live the dream" if they are busy reading travel stories about guys retracing the steps of Genghis Khan?

Finally, am I being terribly humorless about all this, and should I really set my mind to school work?

changed my mind

I've decided I don't want to be Edith Wharton when I grow up.

I know. Big announcement. Ms. Wharton would probably be very disappointed.

But as I was sitting in a coffee shop today, literally drinking a cup of coffee, I started to fall asleep while reading In Morocco.

I do realize this makes me sound like an absolute moron -- what kind of person lays out "I started to fall asleep" as part of a critical review? Not a person who should be taken at all seriously in the world of criticism. Especially since I also haven't read Wharton's fictional work.

Nonetheless, I think I'm going to part ways with this book, and its colourful descriptions of landscapes and rooftops.

Going into this work, I was aware Wharton's observations would run to the kind of colonial stuff of early-20th century missionary/Christian women. But where Karen Blixen shared snippets of conversation and told stories of people's lives and adventures, Wharton's book only lays the groundwork for what Morocco is or was.

That said, that is quite an accomplishment. As Wharton points out from the start, at the time she was writing this book, Morocco was relatively unknown beyond its coastline to "western" readers. She is more or less writing the blueprint for future travel guides, albeit with a great deal more talent and poetry.

Examples of what is lovely about this book:

"It is a good thing to begin with... a mishap, not only because it develops the fatalism necessary to the enjoyment of Africa, but because it lets one at once into the mysterious heart of the country: a country so deeply conditioned by its miles and miles of uncitied wilderness that until one has known the wilderness one cannot begin to understand the cities." (p. 14)

And:

"Buildings, people, customs, seem all about to crumble and fall of their own weight: the present is a perpetually prolonged past. To touch the past with one's hands is realized only in dreams; and in Morocco the dream-feeling envelopes one at every step." (p. 85)

out of time

To read Out of Africa is to, at first, keep images of Meryl Streep and Robert Redford in your mind.

And then, it is an uncomfortable journey through a kind of colonialist ideal few people of European origin truly want to own up to. In her descriptions of the people native to Kenya's Ngong Hills, Karen Blixen leans heavily on Christian imagery, animal imagery and a "white man's burden" brand of condescension. Like all pioneers, I suppose, Blixen tells tales of amazing and intriguing adventure while she sees herself as something of a parent to the farmers and servants who people her plot of land.

I don't want to undersell the book -- I really enjoyed it, despite a kind of unease that comes with reading a selection of non-fiction stories nearly 80 years after publication. My time is different from her time; what she would have seen as a modern treatment of everything around her, I see as patronizing and, at times, racist.

Nonetheless, this is the story of Blixen's love for Africa, her farm, and to small degree, the man she planned to be buried with. Her tales bring to mind an Africa that no longer exists; a romantic continent of mystery consistently undermined by the Europeans who took it through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Towards the end, as Blixen watches the Kikuyu dance, she writes, "It was not I who was going away. I did not have it in my power to leave Africa, but it was the country that was slowly and gravely withdrawing from me, like the sea in ebb-tide." (p. 324)

remember who you are

Ok, this might be my favourite book dedication ever:

Mom and Dad,

I could never have done this without your faith, support, and constant encouragement. Thank you for teaching me to believe in myself, in God, and in my dreams.

This book...aside from the nine F-words, thirteen Sh-words, four A-holes, page 257, and the entire Warren Beatty chapter...is dedicated to you.

You might want to avoid chapters twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, anything I quote Mom saying, and most of the end as well.

Sorry. Am I still as cute as a button?

Love,

Elna

Cute, right? It's from The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance. So far, hilarious.

I'm in the mountains for a few days, and have a pile of books to read. Literally, a pile. Think Cameron Diaz in The Holiday. Yes, I watched that movie. What of it?

My get-relaxed-quick readings include:

Margaret Laurence's The Fire-Dwellers (a companion, it appears, to Laurence's A Jest of God);

Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman;

Michael Ignatieff's The Russian Album;

Rajaa Alsanea's Girls of Riyadh;

Lizzie Skurnick's Shelf Discovery;

Karen Blixen's Out of Africa;

Joseph Boyden's Through Black Spruce;

and Elizabeth Hay's Garbo Laughs.

Yes, lugging this many books through an airport does land you in a conversation with security folks who have novel suggestions. (Apparently I should read Cormac McCarthy.)