@@CHAP@@ Introduction
“OF THE GLADDEST MOMENTS in human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands.” Thus Sir Richard Burton, who knew whereof he spoke. I myself have always been a partisan of that point of view, although Emerson’s “travel is a fool’s paradise” gratifies me just as much. To set out for someplace far away or strange is to take an active part in that baffling journey of ours through life into death; to stay home and improve one’s self-knowledge (perhaps through armchair traveling) is to do the same; both men were right.
My friend Steve Jones, with whom I hop freight trains now and then, eagerly reads this anthology every year. I asked him what he likes best about it, and he said: “I like the variety of the places the writers are going and how odd those places can be, and also the writing style. I like the fact that some pieces are somber and some are just quirky and there are usually a couple of hilarious ones thrown in.” During my selection of essays (from sixty-odd finalists, among whom I discovered both the editor of this series and myself; these of course were rejected immediately to avoid any conflict of interest), I tried to consider what might please Steve, in hopes of pleasing you.
Monte Reel’s “How to Explore Like a Real Victorian Adventurer,” which I have chosen to open this volume, introduces us to the Victorian-era travel guides, which he calls “lovingly compiled tip sheets on the acquired art of paying attention.” The epigram from Burton appears in his essay. Emerson also gets his due here, because Reel applies the Victorians to that peculiarly unknown land, the local Sprawlsville. “Instead of being a vacuous purgatory that deserved pity, the mall grew in complexity with each stride. The point that the how-to-explore books collectively hammered home is this: if you sincerely investigate it, every detail hides reason, and any environment is far more sophisticated than our senses appreciate.”
Sincere investigation demands an exposition without constraints. When someone asks an author how long his work in progress will run, the best answer is “As long as it takes to say what I need to say, and no longer or shorter.” Victorian adventurers, of course, most often traveled on their own capital. What Marx called “the cash nexus” now taints the production of most “professional travelers.” Essays in mainstream periodicals are vulnerable to several types of commercial damage. First of all, the editorial department, not the writer, sets the word count, which relates to the subject and the writer’s nature only accidentally. Second, the draft received passes through any number of hands, whose cuttings and pastings need not be in concert. It is not only a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth, but also of nobody knowing who has added how much salt. Third, the number of advertisements slated for a given issue goes far in determining how fat it can be. Thus after an essay has been hacked down to meet a given word count, it may be mutilated again, or even expanded. I have occasionally had something excised from an article of mine, only to be asked at the very end, by someone who never saw the original, to add just that, but in a different part of the essay, since the place where it once lived is long gone. These bemusing vicissitudes of the freelancer’s circumstances render the treasures brought home from the voyage—that is, the details, and their causes and meanings—subject to vandalism. Hence “the acquired art of paying attention” is best served outside the marketplace—either by travelers of independent means, such as Richard Burton, or by travelers who control their own means of production, such as the daring train-hopper Aaron Dactyl, a portion of whose self-published magazine appears last in this book. Most of us do sell ourselves, and our work as published by the magazines shows the consequences. My feelings about this are well described by one of Timbuktu’s historians: “In my worst dreams, I see a rare text that I haven’t read being slowly eaten.” He, of course, is referring to bugs, not editors. You will meet him in Peter Gwin’s “The Telltale Scribes of Timbuktu,” which is perhaps the most traditionally Victorian of this year’s travel essays: carefully drawn, rich in anecdotes and observations, complete with romance (of a sad sort) and danger, and set in a locale that we might now call Orthodox Exotic.