Yesterday I went to a wonderful
event at the equally wonderful Daunt Books on London's Marylebone High Street. The event
– titled ‘Capturing a Sense of Place’
– was the last of Daunt Books’ first two day ‘spring books festival,’ and the lovely
old bookshop was crammed to the rafters with people who had come to hear a
conversation between four very interesting writers. Mahesh Rao, a debut
novelist who has written about the city of Mysore in India, where he currently lives; distinguished
travel writer, Colin Thubron; celebrated historical novelist, Tracy Chevalier –
author of Girl with a Pearl Earring, which
was first launched at Daunt Books, were all in conversation with travel writer
and historian, Barnaby Rogerson, who also runs the well known Eland imprint, which specialises in
keeping great travel classics in print.
The conversation was a fascinating
and insightful exchange in which all four writers spoke of their own notions of
place and what makes for good descriptive writing in both fiction and
non-fiction. Each seemed to agree that whilst fiction allows a greater freedom
one’s descriptions of place need to be based in reality in order to be
believable, and similarly in non-fiction too – particularly in travel writing –
the ring of authenticity does more than make a descriptive passage simply
credible, it need not be embellished or dramatised in order to make it
evocative or informative. Indeed, as Colin Thubron noted not all aspects of
travelling are necessarily that interesting – most journeys are characterised
by long periods of tedium and boredom. Mahesh Rao commented that he thought
this made the prospect of writing non-fiction, such as travel books,
prohibitively daunting: “What if you go on a journey and nothing interesting
happens to you?!” –
That, Colin Thubron said, was the travel writer’s greatest
fear: “Most people think a travel writer’s fears will be about the possible dangers
of travel, but actually the greatest fear is that nothing dangerous will happen
– at least if everything goes drastically wrong you’ll have lots to write
about!” However, even the tedium and the boredom have their place too. Thubron
cited how a stagnant and unproductive month in China was condensed in one of
his books into a couple of paragraphs, the trick is knowing how to balance this
properly within the narrative – you don’t want to bore the reader, but you
still need to give them a sense of that reality which makes for genuine
authenticity.
Tracy Chevalier made several
interesting points. Firstly, how she thought we all have a tendency to “anecdotalise”
our lives – essentially we all tell stories based on our experiences. She gave
the example of how we tell stories about things which happened to us whilst we
were on holiday and how in subsequent retellings we will instinctively trim the
edges and tidy the parts which didn’t work or lessened the impact, and in that
sense we begin to shape our own stories – good writing is much the same, it’s a
process of honing a story or a telling of something personal into its most affective
essentials. For her – she said – she thought good travel writing was all about
finding the right mix of “person and place.” The other writers on the panel all
agreed. A good travel writer needs to convey something of themselves, their
personalities, and their responses to the places in which they find themselves
and which they are describing in their prose. Colin Thubron gave the example of
how when he began writing “as a younger and perhaps less confident man” he
chose to write about small places essentially because he felt he needed to know
all about them first and these were easier to research and read up on – yet
later, when he ventured to take on bigger themes and bigger places, such as the
Soviet Union and China, he realised that not
knowing all about them could be part of that process of writing – it became
more about journeys of discovery and feeling, rather than simply factual
journeys of straight reportage – essentially a mix of the two tends to work
best.
Each writer read an extract of
their own work and an extract of a work which had resonated with or inspired
them in some way. It was interesting to hear their choices and the conversation
naturally progressed on to the idea of how travel writing has grown and evolved
over time, how so many writers and publishers have long been announcing the
demise of the genre, and yet its resilience seems to constantly keep it
bouncing back. The panel were asked to speculate about the future of travel
writing. The idea that travel writing was becoming less vital now that we can
all travel, or, if not, we could all certainly access far away places on-line –
‘googling’ up images and footage of what these places look like rather than
seeking out descriptions in travel books. Tracy Chevalier said she was
concerned that the speculative demise of good travel writing would leave
writers of the future without access to what we make of travel now, worrying (rather
dismissively, I thought) that – “now that we can all write about our travels so
instantly on-line” – such future writers would only have “personal blogs and
Tripadvisor” to rely upon, and that largely there was “no good writing of that
sort to be found on-line.” This was the only point of the conversation that I
would take issue with – not simply because I write a blog about my own travels,
naturally! – but because I think it is manifestly untrue. There is plenty of
good writing being posted on-line both by established or emerging writers and
‘amateurs.’ And as a historian I’d say that such blogs and Tripadvisor, should
they remain accessible, will become as useful as future source materials as the
newspapers and popular press journals of the past are to us now. Future writers and
historians will no doubt have the critical facility to sift and differentiate
what’s valuable from what is less useful. Colin Thubron stated that he thought
the greatest strength of the travel writing genre was its great adaptability,
and that essentially it all came back to Tracy Chevalier’s point that good
travel writing was all about finding that balance of “person and journey” –
this was ultimately what shone through in the end, it’s what we all relate to
in good travel writing, and therefore what makes it endure.
It was an excellent, thoughtful,
and thought provoking conversation which made for a very enjoyable evening
(accompanied by a very enjoyable glass of wine too!) – an excellent end to what
looked like a great list of events. Hopefully it will be but the first of many
such spring festivals at Daunt Books.
