Sally Tisdale's 1995 article in Harper's loudly voiced a suspicion that many travel writers are just bitter and second rate imitators of previous generations of travel explorers. Her article provides a sketchy review of many recent "classics" of modern travel writing.
The aim of my presentation is to explain and analyze her argument in detail, for it encapsulates many of the accusations made about contemporary travel writing. She begins by drawing a series of distinctions between more traditional (read better) travel writers and their ungrateful and grumpy followers:
"These were writers who traveled because they wanted to travel, who traveled to and wrote from. [Mary] Kingsley and [Robert] Byron became their own subjects only to the extent that they reported what happened to them and not others. Their books--however cranky at times--are flavored with generosity and good spirit, and even now are anodyne to a world of xenophobia and rage. I read them and I think I would very much like to have gone along, too.
"The modern reader has the misfortune of living in a time when travel literature is booming and good travel writers are few and far between. The genre places enormous importance on the idiosyncrasies of the writer; nothing exists outside of the author's vision, and if that vision and desire are marked by a smallness of spirit, no amount of technical skill or precarious death-defying will suffice to make a good book. . . . Modern travel writers have betrayed their mandate. The writers themselves are the subject now, not the places they go, and in this particular form of navel-gazing, that means the subject is their own discontent. They may be gifted stylists, and sometimes gifted thinkers as well, but their books feel like exercises in self- importance, in existential dismay. Their success as literary products depend on the inferiority of the places they travel, of other travelers, of readers themselves" (66-67).
Of course, it would take a very long presentation to address all of her claims. My paper will focus on three key terms that Tisdale emphasizes: the "good heart" of first-rate travel writers, the notion of betraying a "mandate," and the concept of "inferiority." My general conclusion is that Tisdale is right to note the strained and bitter tone of recent travel writing; however, she also over-simplifies the intentions of travel writers and their relations with an international readership.
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