Travellers' tales

This evening, after an introduction by Michael Palin, I listened to the celebrated author Paul Theroux speak at the Royal Geographical Society.

It was an amusing and thought provoking account by a master story teller and consumate traveller.

Humour emerged through such tales as Bruce Chatwin trying to impress a dinner party guest with an account of the ascent of a British hill in the rain, not realising that he was speaking to Sir John Hunt and Sir Edmund Hillary. Then there was the tale of a fat lady who got stuck on the toilet of an Amtrak train resulting in a special stop to summon assistance. (And this on the day that President Obama's heavily armoured car got stuck in a bumpy Irish car park.)

Serious talk centred on the view that a traveller will, sooner or later, realise his (or her) smallness in a big and complex world. The successful traveller (and writer about travel) will become a nobody, a person who blends into the background, one who listens, compromises and reconciles.

There was talk too about different types of travel books, including those that seek to discover places or people, to uncover history, to tell a tale of endurance, or to make social comment. From that I realised that my writing project has become stretched between two objectives. I have lumped two diverse strands together. The first work was a simple account of travelling across Transylvania and Moldavia on horseback in the 1990s. The second, part-written thread is a journey of self-discovery. The two do not sit together easily. They must be split and worked separately.

The first account is a unique account of exploring a fascinating place just before a torrent of change poured out upon it. Editing with the benefit of hindsight will improve it. It has to be an account of the people that I met and the places that I travelled through. Meanwhile the second and much more complex work is a story of self-discovery. That new awareness is mirrored by my discovery of the character of Transylvanians amongst whom I lived, and self-acceptance by new understanding leading to reconciliation with them.

So I enjoyed the evening and the experience helped me to understand the natures and purposes of my writing projects.

Comments

[jess]

How I would have liked to be at that writers meeting Julian. I too feel like the book I am attempting to write is stuck inbetween a life journey and something else.

You at least have experience on your side. I look forward to reading the finished product.

[White Horse Pilgrim]

Jess: it's true that one needs to live a certain amount of life in order to write about it. But, as Theroux commented, there are travel writers who produced books after just a week or two in a place.

Perhaps your book will be a discovery of Italy from a unique perspective? One thing I learnt from Transylvania is that one must cultivate a certain love and appreciation of a place in order to write something that others will want to read - a simple account of how corrupt it all is, and how hard to do business, won't interest too many people. Your life journey can mirror your discovery of Italy - finding a place and yourself on a journey of parallels that yield insights.

I'd better knuckle down and do some serious writing. I think that the book about Romania will be a good year in the writing, not least because I am still learning at a pace that makes the goalposts move.