call.me.ishmael's blog

lovely, huh?....
It’s dinnertime in India. Oh joy. Let the guessing game begin. The waiters throw down the plates: Spices. Heavy spices. Burn-your-taste-buds-until-your-tongue-falls-off spices. And curry. Multicolored, thick and goopy curries. And then there’s that stuff. Goat stomach? Sheep’s tongue? I don’t even know. I can’t, nor do I want to, identify this heap of tissue on my dish. I am from America, I am American, I am the daughter of a system of nutritional facts. There are labels even on water. I miss my USDA. I want my FDA guarantee. There is no guarantee here. Nothing is guaranteed in India.

I get up to wash my hands. They are dirty from the naan and sauce mishmash. It was like finger-paints. My hands are simultaneously dripping and cakey. India’s culture has spoiled them. Thanks a lot tradition. I bow down to you, ancestors of old. Yea right. Sure, I’ll sacrifice my shorts, a few hours to jetlag, even my cellular addiction, but not my fork, knife, and even napkin in order to “respect” the customs of this place. I hate this mess. I feel like a barbarian. This isn’t my idea of a family vacation. Why did we have to come here? Only to get our hands dirty?

A "bad" idea? Maybe to Guo... I chose to read the article regarding an interview with Xiagolu Guo about her artistic history and vision. In it, she talks about her purpose of writing A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary, saying that: “it's not really about East meets West, alright?...Those are bad novels. It's such a concept. You lose the real meaning."

The idea of calling them “bad novels” stuck with me through the reading. Books today, particularly ones dealing with travel or other cultures, seem to always base their themes around conflict. Whether its East meets West; new versus old; traditional thought versus new, transcendental, “carpe diem” thinking; or a struggle in politics, most, if not all of the novels we have read so far deal with making a stance, or shedding light on a certain societal issue. (And have all ended, unfortunately enough in a death of a main character to some extent.) I do not see this trend as being necessarily a “bad” thing, and would have grouped Guo’s novel into the same literary grouping. But she made the point of saying that this was not her “concept”. Then what was, I wonder? So much of her novel’s entries revolved around dealing with the associated troubles of being a foreigner in Europe, learning English. Her “dictionary” was a result of the chasm created by the East meets West conflict fostered within Z’s soul. Furthermore, what is the meaning then, if the supposed conflict is “bad” and no longer legitimate? Where can the “real meaning” be found?

How pretty! After reading the criticism of Neri (Ripening in the Sun), I became aware of the importance the beauty of the Italian landscape had on the characters in “The Evening of the Holiday”. It was set against the romantic Italian countryside, which has been a “holiday-land of novelists”, like Henry James in Daisy Miler. The passage notes that, because of Italy’s “beautiful, civilized landscape that is at the same time both excitingly exotic and reassuring familiar. It is a place of experience and tolerance, where everything is possible because everything has happened before.” What it means to say is that because of its ability to be called up to the artistic minds of novelists throughout time, Italy has become the archetypal, romantic backdrop for a traveler’s exploration of himself or herself. But Hazzard does not use this beauty stereotypically. Using a female heroine primarily shows this difference. Sophie, in the novel, also does not stay in the “English colonies of Venice, Rome and Florence” of her culture, but rather, goes out and explores the beauty of the Italian countryside with an authentic Italian. For instance, Sophie opens herself to the beauty of the land by venturing out to the farm and the churches, viewing the frescoes and culture she would have missed out on if she had just stayed in her hotel. Love, or the desire for it, could probably be the cause of this. For, had she not had an interest in Tancredi, she would have not seen the landscapes of the Italian country that shaped her character. For she, at the end has become less serious, more open to the culture of others. Thus shows how “Shirley Hazzard is [more] vitally concerned with the interrelationships of environment, life-style and character [than previous authors]”.

I don't think this is such a hard equation to balance.
In response to Rich’s epitaph: “Now we dwelt in two worlds/ the daughters and the mothers/ in the kingdom of the sons,” and the novel, I think that they both put women in a very negative light. The Comfort of Strangers, especially, makes women seem helpless victims or aimless beings in a “kingdom of…sons”. Yes this is a patriarchal world, but that doesn’t mean women are subject to everything in a man’s mind. Maybe its because I was raised by a single mom, but I found a lot of references to the helplessness, and thus hopelessness of females in the novel. And a lot of it was centered on Caroline and Mary experiencing sexual tension with their male counterparts. What I really didn’t understand was, particularly with Caroline, the fact that the women knew they were being subject to the men, and with this knowledge allowed them to continue controlling them. They fueled their domination. This was seen in Mary, too, when she would just tag along everywhere with Colin, becoming his sex machine. The book in a strange way reminded me of the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” in that regard.

Venetian Love Boats The second and third discussion questions deal with Aschenbach’s purpose in traveling to Venice. I think what draws this artist to the Italian vacation spot is just that. He wants a vacation. Like Port and the characters in “On the Road”, Aschenbach is just another writer confined by his surroundings. In Munich, he feels stifled and has the itching to move and just leave, temporarily. I see him in the beginning to be a recreational traveler, for he all he admittedly wants is a getaway, someplace new and fresh. Its interesting however, that fate has a lot to do with the travel in this piece of fiction. For, Aschenbach’s destiny was sealed when his luggage went instead to Como, making his decision to stay in Venice decided for him. This decision ultimately gives him more time to fall more deeply in love with Tadzio. Soon, Venice becomes a new home for Aschenbach, I would argue, for it inspires him to change. Venice is just the bystander associated with this change, however, for I would say that Tadzio is the obvious catalyst. Just because Venice happens to be the place where Aschenbach is able to be near Tadzio, it therefore becomes his new home by default. But I would go so far to suggest that Tadzio himself becomes Aschenbach’s new ‘centre’, in Cohen’s words, for he sets out to change his appearance and his perspectives just to please him. Thus, Venice was just a stage for his artistic and intrinsic romance. He never even really liked Venice, for its weather was unpleasant to his health, and its streets were confining and tourist ridden. The installment of the plague did not help situations. Through Tadzio, however, Aschenbach disregarded all of these troubles, and instead, enjoyed everyday fresh and new, delighting in his routine of new clothing and observation on the beach.

Darkness still exists beyond the rainbow It is safe to conclude that the characters of Theroux’s “Mosquito Coast” are not static. In fact, it is following the destruction of Fat Boy, the explosion of all that is methodical and scientific in the Fox’s world, that the family’s experience with their environment changes. Fat Boy’s demise, which represented complete self-sufficiency, the ability for the foreigners to live in their own world abroad, signaled for the travelers a dynamic alteration. No longer were they the ‘chosen ones’ of revolution or the ‘last sole survivors’, escaping the nonsense of the Americas, but instead they became slaves of the earth, pitiful scavengers of Honduras’s wild jungles. This is seen when the Foxes are alone, caught in the miserable mud and rain off the coast, which threatens to tear their family, and their lives, apart. Their trip, the open wilderness that they thought they could escape to, conquer, and name as their own, got the better of them.

Spooky Jungle In the novel, Kurtz can be argued as being the most “existential” traveler, going back to Cohen’s descriptions. He was ‘touched’ by the wilderness and had heard the call of the wild. Kurtz was also one with the natives, even having that indigenous lover, who sharply contrasted with he Intended. The contrast seen there alone, in addition to what his Intended presumed about his death and nobility, highlights how different Kutrz’s memory was before and after his trip. Africa obviously changed him. For the Marlow even felt dissonance and discomfort when trying to find responses to the Intended’s talk of Kurtz being just and admirable to the end. Kurtz went into the wilderness and heard its call all right. He went in with “sound” method and became consumed. “The horror” he experiences before his death could then be the truth of his life shown before his eyes. It could be the final light shed upon his ‘heart of darkness’. Traveling so deep into the jungles, like Kit, his soul was consumed and transformed. Be it from the environment, the culture, his psychological dissatisfaction, or whatever, Kurtz did for a fact unlatch from the standards of his old life, and allow himself to be the tool of the “primitive” forces of the jungle. He submitted to greed and personal lust for legacy. He had “no restraint” in the wilderness and thus his methods became “unsound”.

“Adventure is a path. Real adventure - self-determined, self-motivated, often risky - forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind - and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” - Mark Jenkins

The allure of authenticity has never been purely black-and-white. To the cosmopolitan, it seems as if the persona of the traveler is hidden by colorful designs of fallacy. These dazzling distractions make it difficult to experience the real. This grey definition between a traveler and tourist has even been scrutinized by sociologic contemporaries, such as analyst Erick Cohen, as well as in great travel novels, particularly The Sheltering Sky, by Paul Bowles. In fact, both works ventured to take the dichotomy its pinnacle, suggesting that the ultimate traveler is not as elusive as tourists believe. It does in fact exist. However, by using Bowles’ heroine Kit as a point of reference, for she arguably undergoes Cohen’s highest “existential mode”, one can conclude that the quest for true ‘authenticity’ may actually be a destructive one. Based in experiencing a ‘centre’ unnatural to them, the ‘true traveler’ may conclusively find themselves lost at the end of their expedition; lost in a sea of meaningless color and abstraction.

Road trips are fun!When reading On the Road, by Jack Kerouac, I am getting the simultaneously overwhelming and sorry feeling of wanting to just get into a car and drive just for the purpose of burning gas, but then likewise not being able to because I’m stuck here in NYC (and driving is probably the last thing I want to do in this environment). But that only goes to show you, if the book makes a New Yorker long for the highway, what must have been its effects on the audience at the time when the book came out? I think this novel probably fueled (no pun intended) the engine (I had to carry the metaphor) for road trips. With Sal and Dean always hitchhiking and living “IT”, the allure of the road, snacks and friends must have really increased. Unlike “Daisy Miller”, or “The Sun Also Rises”, this novel has much more of an American feeling, more of a domestic and relatable feeling, because of its direct connection to the American way of life—the automobile. Sal and company didn’t feel to me so much like travelers as they were adventurers out for a, somewhat irresponsible, good time. Perhaps this is because their trip was the less exotic Route 66-type trial and they were still in America. Not even the fact that they went back and forth so out really has much to do with it in my opinion. Sal wasn’t in search of a new home, I don’t think, just in search of a goodtime.

Saharan SunsetIn Bowles’ “The Sheltering Sky”, themes of travel and foreignness are plentiful and scattered everywhere. Port discusses the difference between the traveler and the tourist from the get go: “He did not think of himself as a tourist; he was a traveler. The difference is partly one of time…” (ch. 2). I think it’s funny that Port finds himself to be a traveler, especially is time is a criteria, because he is always on the move, a point which even Kit gets a bit frustrated over. I do agree that time has a lot to do with one’s passage from tourist into the realm of the traveler. The longer you are there, the more are exposed to the culture, or at least one would hope. And the more cultured you are, the more you can discover about your environment and yourself. A traveler is in essence an explorer on various frontiers. As compared to the thoughts of Port, “[a tourist] accepts his own civilization without question; …[whereas a traveler] compares it with the others, and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking.” (ch. 2). It is thus that the “global thinker” that is part of the traveler image is enforced. I wonder why this form of active independence is so esteemed. Why do people long to be travelers, and shun the tourists? Why is tourism usually negative? Is it because travelers seem to have an active influence, or control and participation with their environment? Or is it because this activity requires some effort (its easy to be a tourist, not so much a traveler) and therefore is worthy of recognition and merit?