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“Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.” - Jorge Luis Borges. “The Threatened”, from The Book of Sand [ El Libro de arena]
 
I had always imagined my life thus far to be a wry variant of metafiction. I lived books. I lived the words I read and I respired them, the ink blots fusing to form alternate worlds all settled in my lungs and bred with my atoms. Being such an invested participant in literature, it is really no wonder I became a scholar of Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. He wrote of simultaneous futures, of forking paths and of labyrinths, of magical realism infused in the quotidian. He manifested the world as it appeared through my kaleidoscope eyes.
             I am not yet sure if meeting her was an emulation of the dream or the rupture that sundered the dream forever.  I remember seeing her for several mornings before we actually spoke. Café Las Violetas, on Avenida Rivadavia, Buenos Aires. They came to know me there very quickly.  I was the twentysomething American  who sat in the same table near the window each time and rotated between two drinks ( un cappuccino or un espresso por favor): always surrounded by my usual entourage- that is, a variation of feverishly annotated, dog-eared texts and ink-stained journals.
            I think I only noticed her because of the euphony of her footsteps.
             (My mind worked in a series of unfathomable mechanics that to this day baffles me. I was constantly navigating the world as if it were a maze. Ambiguity is thy name, an un-amused former girlfriend had once said to me. A real fucking living paradox you are, Cameron. She took an emphatic drag from her cigarette and I said Yes, isn’t it pretty to think so?)
            Her walk…it sounded like spring rain on dampened April soil. Tender  soft-lipped passion.
She gingerly touched her feet to the ground, her spry cocoa  legs extending like Degas’ ballerina’s. She walked right up to the counter and asked for un café con leche y una media luna por favor.
            She was wearing what appeared to be a private school uniform. She coquettishly puckered her lips and blew on a stray piece of caramel hair, revealing a fey-like countenance and azure eyes. I shuddered imagining the heat of her breath. And she left, with her languid lilting footsteps.
            My mornings became marked by her ephemeral visits- it was as if the upper left chamber of my heart calculated the precisions of her movements. She was the cadence to my pulsations.
            It was the seventeenth morning. As always, I was entwined in the limbs of my latest textual endeavor, a deconstructionist analysis of Borges’ Ficciones. There was a singular phrase I highlighted and re- wrote endlessly:” A labyrinth of symbols... An invisible labyrinth of time.” I must have repeated it out loud to myself quite a few times. It was quite consuming, actually. Which is why I didn’t notice her approaching me.
            “You should be careful. People start to get suspicious when a young gringo sits alone in a café muttering riddles to himself.”
A demi-mirage? It appeared to actually be her, she of the mellifluous gait, standing before me- hair in a tousle, leather bag slung over slender shoulder, coffee and pastry in hand, eyes infused with cerulean ardor.
            I somehow pulled some words from my chasmal larynx.
“It’s not quite a riddle, per se,” I replied. “It’s a line from a story by Borges, called”-
“The Garden of Forking Paths,” she responded in her lyrical accent. “We just read that in Literatura Avanzada. Really perplexing, yes? I was not entirely enamored with it.”
            I realized she was now sitting right across from me, taking bites from  her media luna and looking expectantly in my direction.
            “What are you reading that for anyway? Are you a literature major at the university?”
            I shook my head, attempting to mask the incredulity that my morning chimera was sitting a mere heart’s tremble away.
            “I graduated from the University of Chicago two years ago. I’m working on a book about  the life and works of Borges, and I got a grant from my graduate program at Brown to study under one of the professors here for a year  to supplement my research. I’ve been here for a month so far.”
            “You’re American,” she stated spartanly. Before I had the chance to reply, she added, “Americans are always enraptured by Borgesian phenomenology. Russians, too, incidentally. ”
            “You don’t find it interesting?”
She arched her back and drummed her fingers pensively.
“It’s not that I don’t find it fascinating,” she finally said. “I really do. It’s just a matter of personal taste, I suppose. Borges is about consciousness, about imagination and delving into the psyche. It’s about finding missing pieces and navigating your way through abstractions. It’s all very interesting. But when I read it, I don’t feel much. It’s all cognitive, not sentient. And I think that reading should do more than make you think.”
            An Innocent Reader, I thought to myself.
“I definitely agree that he isn’t the great romantic. But I don’t think that it’s completely fair to say that his works are pure cognition. Take “Funes, the Memorious’, for instance. Have you read that one?”
            She half-nodded. “I think so- that’s the one about the man with the supernatural memory, right? He can painstakingly recall every minute detail he’s ever encountered, but lacks the ability to make generalizations and form abstractions- including love. He’s tormented by his genius.”
            “Exactly. It’s tragic. That such a form of genius comes at an immense cost. And The House of Asterion?”
            “That’s the bull one, right?”
“Right you are. The Minotaur, to be exact. He spends his days in solitude, just running around the corridors of a maze- he sees his reflection and pretends that another minotaur has come to visit him. How is that not heartbreaking?”
She sighed. “You’re right. I guess what I’m talking about is love. I want to read about love. I think that love is what makes one human. That’s why I like Neruda’s poems, and Nabakov and Marukami’s novels, and even Kerouac delves into love. Life is a love story. Life is a fiction.”
            I was speechless.
            Life is a love story. Life is a fiction.
            She was my missing character.
She continued. “I guess I’m just waiting for my love story.” Her eyes flickered.
“I’m Camila Julieta by the way. But really just Julieta. Julieta Errante. ”
             ” Cameron. Paradiso.”
Julieta ( foreign vibration of that name delicious upon my tongue) cocked her head.
            “Where did you say you were from, Senor Paradiso?”.
            “I didn’t. I grew up in Manhattan, went to college in Chicago and last year I moved to Providence, Rhode Island to start my graduate degree at Brown. And now I’m here. Are you from Buenos Aires?”
            She laughed. “Of course. I’ve never lived anywhere else my entire life. My father even wants me to stay and go to the University of Buenos Aires next year. It’s one of the best schools in the continent, but I want to travel. Get experience. Paris, maybe. Or Madrid. Maybe Venice. Anywhere with a beautiful name.”
            I nodded. “Wanderlust has always been one of my greatest vices.”
            Julieta smiled wanly. “Do you ever write fiction of your own, Cameron Paradiso? Or do you just analyze it?”
             “I also believe that life can be an odd sort of fiction,” I replied. “It’s like an intertext- a novel comprised of bits and pieces of stories you pick up along the way. But as for writing my own short stories… I had write some in a few creative writing classes in college, and I suppose they were good, but the main problem was they were all the same. They all involved a puzzle of some sort,” I recounted.
            “No love stories?” She leaned back in her chair, and I could tell she was teasing me.
            “Not in the traditional sense, I suppose. But sort of. My love life was always a maze.”
            This made her laugh. Effervescent ethereal.
“I’ve had silly infatuated boyfriends in garage bands who wrote me love songs and scribbled off-rhythm sonnets on napkins. One even gave me a nice little bruise. But,” and she sighed “No written story.”
            I shrugged. “I just couldn’t write it. I’ve  been in love, I think. Not great passion, but I’ve cared about a girl before. I just couldn’t put it into writing. I guess it just wasn’t ready to be worked into my story yet.”
            Julieta grinned and stood up. “I have school. It was lovely to meet you, Mr. Ficciones.”
            Exeunt. All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. Is this accurate? Reality is not always probable, or likely. Life is a moving, scintillating narrative. We construct the story as we go along: does that make it true or does that make it a dream? Neither? Both? It seems to me that the objects of my affections are the closest things to fixed points in my own interior galaxy. I know I love you, and soon little else becomes relevant or reliable. Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time. The ticking of a clock is replaced by your in take and out take of breaths.
            “Put your pen down, silly.” Pause, your arms folded over bare chest. “Look, it’s raining outside.”  
            Droplets streak down the window pane, my fingers trace your spine.
            I roll over to your side of the bed and kiss the side of your neck. Julieta of the symphonic saunter, this is your love story, my dear. Even though it is  wholly and completely true. 
 
***The writer’s interview with The New Yorker
 
TNY: This story covers a lot of ground. Can you briefly give some background as to what inspired you to write it?
 
AC: I visited Buenos Aires last March with my family and fell in love with it, so I knew that’s where I wanted my story to be set. It’s such an interesting city because of the amalgamation of European and South American values. I also studied Borges last year in my AP Literature class and he has become one of my favorite writers, so I wanted to incorporate his works into this story as well.
 
TNY:Can you explain some background about Borges and his works, for those who may not be familiar?
AC: Jorge Luis Borges is said to be the greatest Latin American writer. He is certainly the most well-known outside of South America. He wrote mostly short stories and poems, and developed a theme called magical realism- basically the fact that surreal events are part of everyday life. His short stories are all sort of like maps or puzzles, with things to decipher along the way.
 
AC: TNY:What’s the significance of all the mentions of labyrinths and mazes?
Two reasons. First off, it’s an allusion to a collection of short stories by Borges called Labyrinths, with maps and mazes being a key theme. The other reason is because I wanted to have a symbol that tied together Cameron’s navigating his way through life and the more universal notion of physically travelling.
 
TNY: What are some other direct allusions, literary or otherwise, you make here?
 
AC: Well, I loosely based the idea of life being a dream or fiction off of Marukami’s Sputnik Sweetheart, as well as the “Right, Right you are” line.. Cameron’s response to his unnamed ex-girlfriend ( Yes, isn’t it pretty to think so) is a reference to the last line in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises: I wanted to do this to try and embody Jake Barnes’ ironic quips into Cameron’s personality, and also to try and help the reader make a link between Cameron’s unsuccessful relationship and Jake’s hopelessness in relationships. Cameron’s last name, Paradiso, is an allusion to On The Road’s Sal Paradise: I wanted to secure the theme that he was constantly travelling and searching, and like Sal he is a writer. Julieta’s name is also literary: Camila is a loose reference to Camille from On the Road, to try and supplement the vague reference Julieta makes to being abused…I wanted to try and portray her as a hopeless romantic who still hopes for the best despite being let down. And obviously Julieta refers to Shakespeare’s Juliet, an age-old symbol of true love and romanticism.
 
TNY: Anything else?
AC: I use some lines from other works towards the end. “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women are players” is from Shakespeare’s As You like It. There two direct quotes from Borges: “Reality is not always probable, or likely” and “Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.”
 
TNY: Are there any works that inspired your story but were not directly referenced?
 AC: I think that the idea of Cameron watching Julieta and admiring her beauty is very reminiscent of Death in Venice. Just like Aschenbach wathed Tadzio walk by him every day, and admiring him as if he’s a work of art, Cameron observes Julieta very closely and compares her a work of art, Degas’ paintings of the ballerinas. Also, one of the reasons Aschenbach loves Tadzio’s name is because of how exotic sounding it is, which I also referenced with Cameron. I was inspired by Death in Venice and Sputnik Sweetheart to create the themes of the nature of writing and life as if it were a story or work of art that is constructed. I used the idea of an intertext that Cameron and Julieta discuss- the combination of all different stories and writings, just as life itself is made up of collective experiences and observations.
 
TNY: What were you hoping to convey about Cameron and his ability or inability to love?
I just wanted to show that prior to meeting Juliet, Cameron still believed that life was a sort of story, but his personal story was lacking a main element. And that element is love, or a special interpersonal relationship. That’s why he constantly felt like he was travelling through a maze. He couldn’t write about love because as he said, it wasn’t a part of his story yet. And then Julieta made it a part of his story.
 
TNY: Why did you jump from their first meeting to a seemingly developed relationship?
It’s a story. Boy meets girl. Simple as that.
 
TNY: What is the reader supposed to make of the meta-fictitious twist at the end of the story?
 
AC: Whatever they want, really. To decide for themselves if life is a story, and is a story necessarily true or not true? It was supposed to invoke thoughts about the nature of life and creativity, of realism and surrealism. Not necessarily to provide an answer. There really isn’t one. 

Despite the fact that it is riddled with adventure, humor, beautiful and fantastical descriptions of the American frontier, On the Road is an incredibly depressing novel. I mentioned in my midterm blog post that there are vast similarities among Kerouac's group of ragtags and Hemingway's expatriates in The Sun Also Rises. The roadies that make up On The Road come from a similarly haunting and traumatizing era in American history. This was a generation wedged between the Great Depression and the Second World War, and at the dawning of immense civil rights issues around the country. It seemed that there was nothing pure left, that all was hopeless and withering. Thus, Sal and Dean hop into a car or a train or a bus to try and escape the inevitable mortality. 
I discussed in my blog post how when they travelled to Mexico, they were exuberated by the exotic peasant culture. Both of them really thought that Mexico had something special about it, and that their interactions with the natives proved that there was still some vestige of autheniticty left in the world.Yet, their ignorance of Mexican culture and their naivete proves that their trip to Mexico was not any sort of real catharsis. 

"We had finally found the magic land at the end of the road and we never dreamed the extent of the magic.”( 247) This romanticized account of a country they barely know is indicative of their delusion. Mexico is like a dream. They live in a fantasy world, this place free of the restrictions of American life. We talked in class about how trauma can lead to a layer of depersonalization- part of Depersonalization Disorder is the feeling that one is living in a dream or a movie. When real life has disturbing effects, the disturbed party often escapes into a fantasy world, observing everything as if they are living in a fuzzy dreamworld. I think that Sal and Dean's dillusionment with Mexico comes from their desperation- their extreme unhappiness with the structured and depressing lifestyle in America that they want to find something magical. Yet, escapism only goes so far. By the end of the trip, Sal realizes that the women in Mexico are painted and artificial, that they did not escape death in Mexico. Rather, Sal got sick and was abandoned by Dean( supposedly his best friend). The pipe dream was over. 

Coincidentally, the passage from Sputnik Sweetheart that is used as a monologue in Nearly Famous was my favorite passage in the novel, the one that I thought most expressed the essence of the novel. 
" And it came to me then that we were wonderful travelling companions, but in the end we were no more than lonely lumps of metal in their orbits. From far off they looked like beautiful shooting stars. When the orbits of these two sattelites of ours happen to cross pasths we could be together, maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for a brief instant. The next instant we would be in absolute solitude, until we burned up and became nothing." 
Miu mentions that she discovered that the word Sputnik is Russian for " travelling companion." When Sumire dubs Miu her sputnik sweetheart, Murakami exhibits the paradoxical nature of travelling with other people. In one sense, it creates a special dynamic to have a shared experience with another person, experiencing the same environment and discovering new things together. Yet, travelling with somebody else can also be utterly lonely , and can result in further disconnection. Just like the sputnik sattelites have specific orbits of travel, they are estranged from the earth, mainly by themselves. The three main characters are all intertwined by conflicting relationships of closeness and estrangement. Sumire has an affinity for K and feels a great deal of love for him, but in the platonic, non-sexual sense. SHe feels extremely spiritually connected to him, and does not know what she would do without him. K also feels this connection and bond with Sumire, but he feels a sexual desire that she does not reciprocate, which puts a wedge between them. It is a similar situation among Sumire and Miu: Sumire feels both the platonic and sexual desire and love for Miu. Miu loves Sumire as well- there are implications that it may be more than just friendly or motherly affection- but nonetheless she cannot reciprocate the sexual desire. K fulfills his sexual desire through lascivious affairs, but in the end feels unfulfilled.Each character has an inhibition of some sort that prevents them giving themselves fully.

Despite the fact that the hero and narrator of the story, Z, physically travels far away from home throughout the course of the novel, I focused more on the role that language plays in defining a culture and its speakers. The fact that Z narrates her story in her mangled English not only gives the story a more authentic and fresh tone, but is reflective of her desire to assimilate. Her difficulty with mastering the English language is beyond memorizing the constructions of grammar and idiomatic expressions. The Chinese language has imprinted certain ideological and emotional characteristics in her brain that make the language barrier all the more difficult to overcome. One of the most interesting views about English that Z narrates is that of how it relates to cultural norms and politics.
 “Chinese, we not having grammar.We saying things simple way. No verb-change usage, no tense differences, no gender changes. We bosses of our language” (24). 
Language both divides and unites Z and her boyfriend. A large part of their relationship centers on him teaching her words, her relying on him. " You are my academy," she writes. In return she shares with him Chinese translations of words, and they tell each other their favorite words and why. To a certain extent, mostly at the dawning of their relationship, her boyfriend finds her slip-ups and slightly broken English to be charming.Yet, as Derrida professed, language is unstable. It soon wedges a divide among the lovers. Her boyfriend complains that being around her is tiring, always having to explain words and translate for her. " I become slower when I talk to other people. I am losing my words," he says to her. 
Zhuang views love as something that promises a future, something that can provide her with security. Her boyfriend views love in a more transient, bohemian perspective. He doesn't necessarily want to promise the rest of his life to one person, and he thinks that speculating the future is inferior to living in the present moment. 
" ' Love', this English word: like other English words it has tense. ' Loved' or ' will love' or ' have loved', All these specific tenses mean love is time-limited thing. Not infinite. It only exist in particular period of time. In Chinese, Love is ' 愛' (ai). It has no tense. No past and future. Love in Chinese means a being, a situation, a circumstance. Love is existence, holding past and future. If our love existed in Chinese tense, then it will last forever. It will be infinite." ( 239)
Perhaps their love was doomed from the start, because the love rooted in his mind from the beginning was transient. 

I found myself extremely irritated by the second novella, " The Elephant God." Alice as a character proves herself to be an unlikeable individual: pessimistic, disagreeable, anti-social. I found her to be one of those types of people we've discussed, people who view themselves as intellectually and spiritually above Western society and who want to obtain a form of purity and spiritual guidance through their travels. Alice seems to find everything about The United States worthless, and does not  even bother keeping in touch with her family during her trip. She makes superficial, half-hearted opinions about finding her spiritual side in India, and instead of finding her connection with the elephant to be touching and wholesome, I was just further irritated because of her attitude towards Indian people. Alice likes the idea of being able to say that she went to an ashram and was spiritually cleansed,but is constantly putting down Indian people and looking for faults in each different sector of the society that she encounters. Her job as an English instructor just emphasizes the sense of superiority: she is not teaching these people English because she feels a compassionate desire to better the lives of these people and empower them. She wants to feel like they need her for a skill, and is shocked when this turns on her and she corrupts their former authenticity. One thing that especially annoyed me about Alice was when she would speak to the Indians in broken English, almost mocking them. Since she was so insecure about herself in almost every aspect of her life, she tried to create a superiority through her skills with language. I am not sure what I think about Alice's rape, and the way that she kills off Amitabh. She considers herself damaged and injured, but at the same time refuses to let him win. Tables turn and she is the victim: not only in the sense that she was assaulted, but through the chauvinism she encounters after she presses charges. I felt that this just further antagonized India from Alice's point of view. Like the first novella,( however, that one did not bother me quite so much) the Elephant God shows India to be gruesome and wild, unpredictable and playing tricks on the Westerners who think they have conquered it. Just when they think that they have established a rule over the natives of this exotic land, there is always a force lurking in the shadows- whether a looming sense of malaise or the realization that the savvy American is completely and utterly alone. 

The Comfort of Strangers was a surrealistic, almost dystopian novel that truly disturbed me and left me with a sick feeling when I finished it. The ending was a complete turnabout from the beginning; I thought I was reading a novel about yet another couple that travels to try and "mix things up" in their lives. In the beginning, it does seem like this is the case, but that is precisely why I think McEwan twists the tale into such a gruesome shape. 
I paid a lot of attention to the characterization of Mary and Colin's relationship. They are so close that they "often forgot that they were two separate people." In a sense, this lack of individualization in the relationship proves to be a point of major vulnerability. The fact that Mary and Colin were so emotionally invested in their relationship made them susceptible to Robert's tricks. I was confused about what McEwan was trying to portray about human sexuality in this novel. The sexual nature of Mary and Colin's relationship changes throughout the novel. Before they meet Robert and Caroline, it is suggested that they have very little sex life and do not derive much pleasure from intimacy. But after their first encounter with Robert, they adopt a leisurely, sensual lifestyle- they indulge in sex, sleep, and drugs. By the end, they are irreparably damaged. 
Caroline seems to be a representation of the obsequiousness that takes root in human sexuality. She admits that she enjoys the pain, while Robert tells Colin that women only pretend to want freedom, and really crave domination. To me, this extreme level of disturbance made me wonder if McEwan was trying to show the destructive possibilities of sex, how people can turn it into something to manipulate and destruct. 
I think that purpose of inserting all of these themes into a travel novel was tie the nature of human sexuality into the human desire of exploration and discovery. Like sex, traveling can incite both excitement and fear of the unknown. Traveling instills a vulnerability, making the voyagers blank slates in new places, opening their eyes to new experiences and new sounds, smells, tastes. It is difficult to know when to trust and when not to trust when we are in unfamiliar lands. 

Rich with allusions and exquisitely detailed images, Death in Venice chronicle's the maddening effects of an individual's thirst for aesthetic perfection, wanting to turn the world into a work of art. Aschenbach is an ascetic who perceives beauty in a very classical,stoic manner. The constant allusions to Greek and Roman mythology highlight both the sensuality and the conservativeness of Neoclassicism. Aschenbachen's journey to Venice frees him from the Freudian repression that dampens his sexuality. In Freud's concept of repression, the individual who was repressed was sure to face some sort of break down or malfunction, especially since Aschenbachen has such an intense desire for art: the appreciation of art cannot be free of all passions. Venice is certainly a very deliberate place for Aschenbachen to go through his transformation, as being an epicenter of art and physical beauty. Tadzio's appearance is appealing both because of his resemblances to classical Greek sculptures and of the very unique foreign features. Acshenbachen is enthralled by the euphonic sound of Tadzio's foreign name, and a ceratain degree of his fascination is due to the boy's alien and mysterious origins. Aschenbachen experiences different sorts of reactions to art: a purely removed intellectual perception to a very intense emotional and sensual interpretation. I found that the constant allusions to Greek mythology were only somewhat effective: in my opinion, it was a bit over-wrought and obscured certain aspects of the novel.Yet, there is no doubt that Mann's novel is linguistically exquisite, some of the symbols, such as the red-haired people symbolizing a descent into the underworld and Aschenbachen's decline into utter hedonistic madness, were pure genius. This symbol shows that Aschenbachen is not only physically travelling, but is taking a psychological and emotional voyage as well. The nature of art is transient and ephemeral, and cannot be constructed into rigid criteria. Mann shows how an obsession with beauty and aesthetic perfection can lead to an individual's madness and death. The cholera epidemic that takes place in Venice during the novel seems to symbolize the disastrous effects of living in an imaginary world of beauty: the Italians and travellers stricken with wanderlust do not aknowledge the gravity of the situation. The motifs appearing throughout the novel of ominous clouds and phony boatsmen create a backdrop of impending doom in a beautiful place. 

 Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road share a stunning common factor: both are testaments to lost generations in American history, young people traumatized and disillusioned by a major World War. Though Hemingway’s characters represented people who were actually called the Lost Generation, a term coined by Gertrude Stein, Kerouac’s wandering heathens have much in common. Both groups of people are in desire of discovering some form of purity, and some source of infinity that will make them feel more alive. Hemingway’s characters resort to heavy drinking in bars and hotels, while Kerouac’s drink on the back of trucks and smoke joints in movie theatre bathrooms. The expatriates in The Sun Also Rises live abroad to gain experience and to escape some source of existential discomfort they felt after returning home from the war. Kerouac’s Sal and Dean hit the road away from home to find a new set of life values and to experience the wildness of America.

Something specific, however, that I found very fascinating- Both novels feature trips to Spanish-Speaking countries, the characters fascinated by the rawness and authenticity of the native people, and hope to discover some sort of grand truth from their ways. In the Sun Also Rises, Jake does not have a romantic desire to travel as Robert Cohn does, thinking that travelling will allow him to escape himself and magically solve all of his troubles. Yet, there is a hopefulness that he has for Spain- he loves Spain because he is charmed by its realness, and he finds it to be a refreshing change of pace from the artifice of the Paris expatriate community. Sal and Dean travel to Mexico at the very end of On The Road. Sal had a previous affinity for Mexican people when living with migrant workers in California for a brief period of time, but he is in awe of the unrefined, genuine nature of Mexican people. Dean has reached the lowest point of his sanity at this point of the novel, but he too exhibits excitement about the exoticism of Mexico- it’s another place for him to test his limits and see how infinite he really is. I focused more on Sal’s perspective of Mexico, and his search for the authentic there, just as Jake has search for the authentic in Spain.

Before the group actually leaves for Spain, Jake professes his love for the lifestyle in the very beginning of the novel. Cohn explains his obsession with wanting to travel to South America: “ I can’t stand to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it,” says Cohn. To which Jake replies, “ Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.” Jake is called a true aficionado, a true lover of the bull fighting. He is not only in love with the spectacle of the sport itself, but of the gusto, the great zest for life that imbues the matadors. He truly believes that they are the only people who fully live their lives, and finds this to be an exhibition of both genuineness and of a vivacity that he desires.

Jake finds a charm in the slightly vulgar and uninhibited manner in which the local Spanish townspeople conduct themselves within the village. Jake watches as the peasants stumble through the streets drunk in broad daylight, how they laze about with their brown bags from the liquor store and simply enjoy the sun and their drunkenness. He thinks it’s fantastic. He finds that despite the peasant’s lack of refinement as would be defined by the high class of people he associates with, there is a sense of veracity within them that has not been tempered with. Their simplicity reflects a side of human nature that has not been sculpted into a certain image in order to fit in with societal norms

Jake’s search for the authentic translates into his ardor of bullfighting. Not only does he love the sport and the matadors in general, but also he makes very astute observations as to the styles of the different matadors. Jake appreciates and understands Romero’s greatness in a way that the others cannot comprehend. Romero’s unique style as a matador is one that Jake considers to be pure and bona fide. He does not pull any tricks; he is not ostentatious or flashy with his moves. He has an animalistic connection with the bull itself, and adds a new level of grace and fluidity to the sport that the others simply lack. Romero’s bull fighting style infatuates Jake, for it represents a layer of truth and meaning in life that the artifice of the Parisian expatriate hedonism lacks. . Jake adapts to the Spanish lifestyle better than his fellow travelers: he understands the spirit of the country, and can speak the language with relative ease. Montoya remarks to Jake, “ the other men are not true aficionados like you are.” Jake tries his best to identify with the culture that he respects for its unsullied realism.

Sal really believes that he is going to find what he is looking for when he rolls through the Mexican border with Dean. Mexico embodies Sal’s dream of a rustic exotica, a certain magical land of endless possibility. Enamored instantly by the cheap beer and cigarettes, Dean writes,” Behind us lay the whole of America and everything Dean and I had previously known about life, and life on the road. We had finally found the magic land at the end of the road and we never dreamed the extent of the magic.” ( 276) Dean even starts to throw Spanish words casually into his narrative: cerveza, writing Mexico as Mehico like it is prounced. Mexico represents the last chance at finding the golden authenticity and invincibility of mortality that Sal and Dean crave so intensely. Reminscent of Sal’s stint as a California grape picker, the two are captivated by the unglamorous lifestyle the Mexican peasants lived. “ Real beat huts, man, the kind you only find in Death Valley and much worse. These people don’t bother with appearances.” (277) Much like the bull-fighters and the peasants symbolized authenticity for Jake, the peasants and the minorities, the dark-skinned people on an exotic land represented truth to Dean and Sal.  Sal loved being with the Mexicans for a while in California because he loved the feeling of being close to the earth and working with hands around people who lived off of the soil. The hand-to-mouth lifestyle represented a breed of authenticity that can only be found in the farming life. Now, when they are actually in Mexico, Sal completely idealizes the Mexican people even more, seeing them as mysterious and beautiful “ These people were unmistakably Indians and were not at all like the Pedros and Panchos of silly American civilized lore- they had high cheekbones, and slanted eyes, and soft ways; they were not fools, they were not clowns; they were great, grave Indians and they were the source of mankind and father of it. “ ( 280)Sal thinks that he can learn something from the real indigenous people, the indios. He thinks the native life is pure and superior because of its ancient values and lack of the obvious signs of aritificiality. “The sun rose pure on pure and ancient activities of human life.” (278)

The fact that Jake and Sal ( and Dean) turn towards people of Spanish culture/ descent to find the key to authenticity reflects a romanticized image of dark and native people created by white America. Though Mexico has an indigenous flair that Spain does not possess, their similarities in language and ancestry are laden with idealistic fantasies and quixotic connotations. Jake and Sal represent the experimental mode of travelling: they have been left hopeless and heart-broken in a decaying nation after a gruesome war. They have not lost complete faith in humanity, only in a certain set of values they once lived on. They want to look past the fake: for Sal, the artificial is represented by neon lights and ludicrous Wild West fairs, and for Jake the artificial is seen in the pretentious crowd of Americans who relocated to Paris. They want to find a group of people who represent a value system they can identify with: in this case, it is a search for the authentic, the down-to-earth. The simplistic lifestyles evident in both nations, as well as the sensuality of the language and culture, are symbols of a dreamlike paradise for two lost souls who have abandoned faith in the old American dream. 

Sal's California is a paradoxical mix of hopeful fantasy and surreality and despair and desolation. I once wrote an essay about Joan Didion's collection of essays about California, and the indoubitable link between the land and the people who inhabit it. Sal's mentions California as being " the end of this continent'', its denizens aimless stragglers at the very end of possibilities, the bitter finality of the wide expanse of America. Sal admires Fresno and the grape-picking towns at first for its rustic quality, and the connection he feels with the earth and the countryside. Yet, he recognizes the terminality of California, the last stretch of land before the bottomless Pacific. 
Though Sal notes that he loves the way people in California look up to LA for its dream-like connotation, he writes," I never felt sadder in my life. LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities; New York gets god-awful cold in the winter but there's a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in the streets. LA is a jungle." LA feels inauthentic and desperate in its neon garishness, screams and cries permeating the air. The discovery of California's unglamorous underbelly is a sort of shattering of the American pop culture fantasy. Hollywood, the center of cinematic glamour, is in fact dirty and poor. " All around me were the noises of the crazy gold-coast city. And this was my Hollywood career- this was my last nigh in Hollywood, and I was spreading mustard on my lap in back of a parking-lot john."
Sal leaves California somewhat dejected, but somehow is willing to come back again. 

Cohen's definition of the "experiential Mode" of travel seems to describe Kit and Port perfectly. The experiential traveller is an individual who,prompted by feelings of alienation, futility, and estrangement, travels to embark on a search for meaning in his or her life. Cohen says, " The renewed quest for meaning, outside the confines of one's own society is commenced, in whatever embryonic, unarticulated form,by the search for experiences..."
Port and Kit exhibit their searches for meaning in life differently. For Port, he feels that he is not participating fully in life. He expresses to Kit, on the day that they take an expedition together, that he feels like he is simply living on the outside of life, and he wants to be in the middle of it. Not only does this comment show some sort of emotional void, but it explains why Port is constantly on the move: he is on the quest for something specific, a certain place or experience that will lead him the "middle" of life. He later returns to the site later on that night alone. He thinks to himself that it would be horrible if Kit found out he came back without her: either she would not understand why, or she would understand all too well. This indicates the gaping hole in Port and Kit's relationship, as well as Port's physical desire to find a place that will somehow add meaning to his life. Port is constantly on the move: he goes into the dessert, he seeks out natives, he places himself in precarious situations. He wants to experience difference facets of life through actively searching for a tangible element of purpose. 
Kit's existential angst manifests itself differently than that of Port's. Kit's paranoia, centering around the omens she interprets, is a way of compensating for the meaningless she feels in life. By overanalyzing daily events and interpreting them as signs of doom, Kit adds a layer of structuralism to the ambiguity of the universe. Kit also recalls how she once thought that if Port were to die before she, it would be she who had really died- she imagined herself as living only in some sort of dream world that needed Port to exist. Kit's descension into insanity is a deconstructive one: she delves deeper into her subconscious, yet can also be said to have reached a certain nirvana with her disregard of societal norms. The enigmatic nature of Kit's existential discovery is frightening to the reader. 

The characters in The Sheltering Sky are precisely the kind of so called “travelers” that Huxley detests. Not only are their reasons for travelling those of the “tourist” persuasion, but their attitudes and reactions to Morocco mirror societal stereotypes of privileged, ignorant Westerners.
Kit and Port clearly have an unhappy, dying marriage. The trip for them is a last resort to try and fix the gaping holes in their relationship. Kit and Port feel disconnected and hope that not only a change of scenery will help their relationship, but also that some sort of shared experience will create a new bond for them. Neither of these proves to be true. It is almost impossible for them to have similar thoughts and emotional connections:                        
“ Riding down to Boussif he realized he never could tell Kit that he had been back there. She would not understand his having wanted to return without her. Or perhaps, he reflected, she would understand it all too well.” (96)
The foreign setting of the story furthers the same that are somewhat estranged from each other. Not only are they outsiders in Morroco, but they are outsiders within their own relationship.
Port and Kit both seem to have somewhat ignorant attitudes towards travelling and foreign cultures. Kit is preoccupied with her individual anxieties and neuroses, reducing her surroundings to a homogenous dirty Arabic world. Like many Western women, she looks down upon the native people and feels uncomfortable with less than luxurious amenities. Port to me seemed, to a certain extent, indifferent. He thinks all the Arabs on the street look the same, and sees them only a mass of outsiders. Though to his credit, he is willing to explore more than Kit is, almost all of his personal observations and adventures have less to do with what he is seeing and more to do with him. Port is a man who is missing something, and is constantly trying to find it.
The Lyles are hysterical characters. They are clearly meant to be satirical- Eric is stupid and spoiled, while his mother is ignorant and prejudiced. Eric claims that they love travelling and Africa, but all they do is complain about something- whether it is the “filthy Arabs”, the heat, the diseases. They are the people Huxley was talking about who want to appear cultured and sophisticated, feigning enjoyment. Not only are the Lyles not as intelligent and worldly as they try to be, but they are unable to appreciate the wonders of the places they travel. 

Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises is the quintessence of the “ Generation Perdue”, or the Lost Generation. As implied in the opening quotes of the book, this term was coined by Gertrude Stein in a conversation she had with Hemingway while they were all living in Paris.
The concept of travel is essential to understanding the role the Lost Generation plays in the novel. The Lost Generation refers to young adults living after the First World War, most of them having served for the war or affected by it in some way or another. They have been traumatized by the war and thus lead lives of debauchery, usually consisting of excessive drinking, flaccid sex-filled relationships, and feelings of estrangement and depersonalization. Hemingway’s terse diction encapsulates the dillusion and detachment felt by those in this era.           
Travelling supplements this theme of aimlessness. All of the main characters are American expatriates residing in Europe, already showing that they are displaced and do not quite belong. The first reference to the idea of travel as a means of escape is Cohn’s desire to go to South America.
“ Don’t you ever get the feeling that all of your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you’ve lived nearly half the time you have to live already?”
…” Listen Robert, going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.”
Jake knows what Robert is trying to accomplish, and also knows that it will not work. Jake, in my opinion, is more of a realistic traveler. I do not think it made him any less cultured that he did not want to go to South America. He was satisfied by the simple pleasures of Paris, and by the bullfights in Spain. The most interesting part of the bullfights, other than the fact that every time a bull fight occurs there is a parallel event within the friend group, is that Hemingway depicts the bullfighting in Spain as a more natural way of life- the expats in Paris are just fakes, trying to create an identity for themselves on foreign soil. 

Henry James’ novella Daisy Miller presented numerous aspects of nationality, social class, gender, and cultural understanding charecteristic of the time period and place.Daisy is an outsider in the sense that she is foreigner, she is of a lower class than most of the other Americans who travel in the same area, she behaves not according to custom for women of the time by being openly flirtatious with several men, and she is also noted for her exceptional naïveté. The story clearly revolves around the preconceptions and prejudices that exist between Europeans and Americans.

The first reference James makes to the stereotype of the ignorant American occurs with Randolph and Winterbourne’s first encounter. “ Are you an American man?” pursued this vivacious infant. And then, on Winterbourne’s affirmative reply- ‘ American men are the best,’ he declared. ( 6)

James is setting the scene of the Miller family, who we later find out are regarded as more “common people”, who don’t mix well with the high culture of Europe or the American elite. Daisy’s perspective of travelling is introduced as being vapid and somewhat ignorant- “ She declared that the hotels were very good, when once you got used to their ways, and that Europe was perfectly sweet. She was not disappointed- not a bit. Perhaps it was because she had heard so much about it before. She had ever so many intimate friends that had been there ever so many times. And then she had had ever so many dresses and things from Paris. Whenever she put on a Paris dress she felt as if she were in Europe.” (11)

This account of travelling reveals Daisy’s somewhat vacuous perspective. The description of Europe as “ perfectly sweet’’ highlights her simplistic understanding. She reveals the social status that comes with travels, noting all of her friends had been to Europe and talked about it, and was pleased with the material evidence she gained from visiting Paris. It was when she put on a Parisian dress that she felt she was in Europe.  Daisy has a desire to be a part of high society, though she is not wary of flouting the customs. “ I’m dying to be exclusive myself.” (20)

Ms. Costello’s condemnation of Daisy’s “inconduite” mannerisms and improper overt flirtatiousness are not recognized by Winterbourne initially- he has a vague set generalizations formed about American women- ‘ But don’t they all do these things- the young girls in America?’ Winterbourne inquired. ( 19) Winterbourne’s unawareness of her total “vulgarity” translates itself into a sort of fascination and awe, with several mentions of Daisy’s physical beauty. Yet, Winterbourne eventually catches on to Daisy’s overly flirtacious ways when he makes his way down to Italy and witnesses it firsthand. Yet, even though he disapproves of Daisy’s whimsy, he still maintains a certain enamoration. It is even hinted by Winterbourne that most of the disapproval is out of jealousy.

Daisy’s relationship with Giovanelli represents the dynamic between traveler and native. Daisy is extremely naïve to the traditional comportment of young women in Europe and Giovanelli as an authentic, urbane Italian man. She notes that she was not interested in seeing  “pictures” and such. Giovanelli is completely captivated by Daisy’s beauty and regards her as a charming foreign product. Neither one has a real grasp of the other’s culture.

I wondered whether there was supposed to be a double entendre with Daisy dying of Roman Fever- not just the actual Roman Fever which is a strain of malaria, but perhaps referring to the fatality ( psychologically speaking) of the illusions and glorifications one constructs about faraway lands. 

Life, up until this particular crevice of time the universe lured me into, had been an amalgam of tangled stories and stardusted illusions of ancestors. And now, as the taxi careened its way through the sinuous curves of the Montes de Malaga, I felt as if the secrets of my bloodline were embedded in Andalusian soil. The midnight air seemed pregnant with the romance of my heritage, the palpability of my origins quickening my pulse. Six years after this voyage, I can recall so clearly the primal connection forged with the hips of mountains as I rode through shadows. What elation, To hear the taxi driver croon words of my mother tongue, the language that was sung to me as a child and the language that forever bound my heart! What passion dripped off of every word, every syllable that escaped his native mouth. I stuck my head outside the window of the car to feel the wind beat against my face, the wind that was woven with the whispers of those who came before me. I thought of how before setting foot on this soil, my heritage had simply been an abstraction that somehow leaped inside my soul like a caged canary, unsatisfied. I spoke the language, I ate the food, I heard the stories, and yet, it was all so illusory, tales of a bygone people and land that lived only in the memories of the elder. And now, I was thrust into the crux of it all. My mother sat beside me, and I felt a particular sort of bond with her. We were both in this together, this country that had borne our predecessors, the roots of our identities. My father sat in the front seat, entranced by the scenery but with a certain degree of removal- this was not the country of his origin, but just another beautiful place he had been. My brother was asleep on my mother’s shoulder, in a dreamless slumber unaware of our history passing him by. We continued down the rustic Andalusia road, and within moments my pipe dream ended: our taxi pulled up to our resort, my mother gave him a tip with the condescension of an American, the doors were opened for us, in we stepped into our golden residence teeming with starry eyed foreigners. I unearthed my roots and dismembered them on the same evening.