J.D. Smith on Writing About Travel

Writing about travel with more or less literary intentions risks certain pitfalls and offers more elusive opportunities.

One of those pitfalls could be called the “slide-show syndrome,” the returned traveler’s tendency to discuss ad nauseam and repeatedly every detail of a journey, shoehorning references into the unlikeliest conversational places. (If this assessment sounds harsh, it is a confession as well as an indictment.)

The origins of the slide-show syndrome are understandable enough. Relating experience serves to process and validate it. So far, so good—for the speaker.

Such sharing may not work nearly as well for an audience. Most travelers’ tales fall far short of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.  They lack not only artfulness, but also any basic structure or rhetoric. A put-upon reader or listener may wonder what is the point of copious minutia on purchasing local craft X in city Y, or the most intimidating offal soup in country Z.

Some curious and motivated individuals may go on to see these things for themselves, but others lack the time or money to do so. Then the traveler’s tale represents the nexus of conspicuous consumption and schadenfreude, with the odious subtext of “I have been there, and you haven’t” –the verbal equivalent of leaving lift tickets on one’s jacket long after a ski trip. This approach can backfire miserably by underestimating the audience’s knowledge. Detecting bias or superficiality, a well-traveled reader may well mentally one-up the writer: e.g., I’ll see your Oaxaca and raise you Bali.

Overlapping with the slideshow syndrome is what I would call the “hero syndrome,” in which the writer, putting on a metaphorical pith helmet or Indiana Jones fedora, plants a personal flag on some set of coordinates. An understandable and sometimes even commendable version of the hero syndrome involves overcoming harsh physical conditions en route to a destination. Whatever the destination may be, dealing with heat, cold, altitude and illness commands respect.

A less commendable version consists of the narrator’s self-congratulation on successfully navigating another culture or objectifying it altogether. V.S. Naipaul and Paul Theroux at their respective, choleric worst come to mind. More explicitly offensive accounts showcase the narrator’s skill in mastering the ways of the quaint natives or knowing “how to handle those people.” The disparities of wealth and power that have made such handling possible go largely unquestioned.

If there are so many ways for literary travel writing to go wrong, how can it go right? Avoiding typical pitfalls means having nowhere to hide. This seeming weakness, though, is a source of strength. Rather than “discovering” or conquering a place, a writer must bear witness to that place and allow for the possibility of being changed by it. A place and its people must therefore be taken on their own terms as subject rather than object, ends in themselves rather than backdrop or playground. And the writer must find, beyond textual souvenirs, insights worth sharing with an audience. Talent or wealth of detail aside, success depends on empathy.

J.D. Smith’s work appears in The Los Angeles Review’s issues 7 and 9, and his collection of essays, Dowsing and Science, will be released from Texas A&M University Press on March 1.