Smag18's blog

The Relinquished Guardian
 
                                                                           1.
 
“Although the bleached earth is only 10cm thick, I can confidently reassure you that its hexagonally gridded crust will support our RadioTaxi!”  Custodio had been meticulously fine-tuning this sentence for the past thirty years.
 
“We aren’t paying you to talk old man,” snickered the belligerent Argentinian passenger before he slouched down just low enough in the backseat to evade Custodio’s rearview mirror.  For the last five years, most of Custodio’s passengers had sat in this blind spot during their entire sixteen-hour excursion into the Salinas Grandes.
 
This new “slouching trend” began in 2001 when Argentina’s economy deteriorated and trapped Argentinian vacationers within their national borders.  From a financial standpoint, this new travel trend had been quite beneficial for RadioTaxi; the company’s tours had just been overbooked for the fifth consecutive holiday season.  However for Custodio, a veteran driver, the new clientele could not have been worse. The Argentinian passengers were self-righteous and rude, uninterested in their own country and unwilling to listen to the information that Custodio had, over past twenty-five years, painstakingly developed into a theatrical extravaganza.  Prior to 2001, Custodio had never missed a day of work, but now he was taking three, sometimes six, sick days at a time.  It was clear that this newly nationalized and disengaged backseat audience had painfully marginalized his status as a great performer to that of a silent, machinelike motorman.
 
Today, however, Custodio was determined to recoup the finely tuned routine that had once impressed his foreign customers, despite his current passenger’s blatant attempts to silence him.
 
“And, if you look now to the right, you will see one of the largest salt sculptures these flats have to offer.  Tradition has it that the miners of the-”
A sudden, sharp pain shot up Custodio’s back and muted his voice.  Despite the pain, he restarted his line, now inaudibly mouthing it to prevent another kick from the backseat, and continued on with his presentation.  Custodio had to practice; it had been years since he last spoke so thoroughly about the Salinas Grandes landmarks that were whizzing by, and today’s drive was the last rehearsal for the next day’s big show.  Tomorrow, after nearly five years of waiting, Custodio would finally be driving Tadzio Anderson.
 
                                                                           2.
 
“He must be American” Custodio remembered thinking aloud when he had first received the week’s client roster, “maybe Italian, but surely foreign.”  Now, after dropping off the day’s Argentinian passenger, Custodio rushed home to triple-check that tomorrow really was the day that he would be driving this non-national.  Surely enough, Tadzio Anderson was Custodio’s next client.   
 
At four the following morning, with the sharp pains still shooting through his back, Custodio lifted himself out of bed, showered, and in honor of the special occasion dug deep into his closet to find the old RadioTaxi collared shirt he had once worn to work (a few years ago the company had switched to t-shirts after some Argentinian clients claimed that the collared shirts were pretentious).
 
At four-thirty, an hour earlier than usual, Custodio began buffing the raw sodium cakes off his RadioTaxi’s wheel well and spent additional time scrubbing the back of the driver’s seat where his previous passenger had left a large, muddy footprint.  Next, Custodio heaved the two ten-gallon water coolers into the trunk and waited extra time for the hose’s water to cool before beginning to fill the containers.  Finally, he placed a homemade snack basket in the backseat, something he hadn’t included for his passengers in at least four and a half years. Custodio did all of this for Tadzio Anderson, a man he had never met but had dreamt so much about.  Today had to be perfect.
 
                                                                           3.
 
The day was not perfect, Custodio had not managed his excitement well. He was fairly sure that he had run over Tadzio’s foot at the pick-up site.  He clearly recalled gripping Tadzio’s hand too eagerly, oddly caressing his shoulder and then awkwardly groping his small luggage.  He had then proceeded to swerve embarrassingly for nearly the entire journey, but most disappointing of all, he had ruined the travel performance that he had spent thirty years perfecting: at one point he had randomly blurted out “This bleach earth is only 10cm wide… I reassure you that those hexagon cracking will not suspend this RadioTaxi!”
 
Nonetheless, Tadzio, through all of these mistakes, had been angelically perfect.  He was punctual at pick-up and had taken genuine interest in Custodio.  Furthermore, Tadzio had spread his eyes wide in genuine appreciation of the snack baskets he found waiting for him, and, most importantly, Tadzio had remained erect in the back seat, reciprocating Custodio’s gazing eyes in rearview mirror for the entire ride.
 
It is clear that Custodio’s rearview mirror subject was what had distracted him so completely and with good reason.  Tadzio’s reflection in the mirror, with the intense white light of the salt flats enveloping his immaculately effeminate upper body had been divine.  Tadzio was a beautiful man, his waving blonde hair had been spared the aggressive shearing so many Argentinian barbers impose upon their clients, and his cream-colored, smooth skin was stunningly foreign in this dry desert climate.  Furthermore, it was clear that Tadzio was pedagogically superior to the Argentinians, and it was this man, of such beauty and genius, that had been the first passenger to thank Custodio in five years.  It was obvious that Tadzio Anderson was simply magnificent.
 
                                                                           4.
 
Even the following morning, through the bus’s interior haze and from a few seats away, Custodio found Tadzio’s magnificence unabated. 
 
After returning home the night before, and sadly discovering that his clients for the next week bore the surnames Romero, Alvarez, and Torres, Custodio quickly called in sick.  He then packed a bag, checked his RadioTaxi into headquarters, and was now on the bus following Tadzio on the way to Jujuy, another Argentinian tourist attraction.  For the entire ride Custodio continuously studied his plan of action and was encouraged each time the bus’s oscillating fan blew the scent of Tadzio’s marvelously foreign shampoo in his direction.
 
Upon arrival in Jujuy, Custodio rushed off to purchase a disposable camera and immediately started implementing his scheme.  He snapped a photo of Tadzio walking the Incan trade route that ran through Jujuy; he got one of his subject sun-bathing on a hotel’s newly renovated pool deck, and thanks to a generous bribe of coca, cocaine leaves that Custodio always carried to vacate his passengers’ nausea, he even obtained a room key and managed a shot of Tadzio sleeping atop an Argentinian folkloric-chic bed.  
 
                                                                           5.
 
Three days later, Custodio was back in the Salinas Grandes driving his RadioTaxi.  Like he always did, he tried opening the day’s trip by reciting one of his finely tuned lines for the Argentinian passengers that slouched invisibly in the back seat, but he received the familiar kick in response.  Today, however, he welcomed his passengers’ despondence because Custodio himself was too busy relishing the car’s new additions to preform.  The RadioTaxi now had two pictures of Tadzio pasted on its dashboard and one taped onto the rearview mirror. 
 
Custodio gazed into Tadzio’s eyes, and was utterly consumed by the images, just as his passengers in the back were completely consumed by their iPods and cellphones. 
Neither party so much as screamed before their RadioTaxi fatally slammed into one of Salinas Grandes’ famous salt sculptures.
 
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“The Relinquished Guardian.” Interview with author Sam Magida.
 
In December of 2010, America’s Best Short Story (ABSS) sat down with author Sam Magida to discuss his short travel story “The Relinquished Guardian:”
 
ABSS: What was your inspiration for the main character Custodio?
 
Magida:  Custodio was born out of the setting of the story.  I was inspired to write about Argentina because of an article I had read in the New York Times about cheap travel in South America.  The article explained how once rustic and adventurous locations were being replaced by new luxury hotels; the article listed Jujuy as an example of this phenomenon.  This idea inspired the theme of destruction in story: how the old tourism business was being “destroyed” and replaced by this new one.  My main character is stuck in the middle of this change and longs for the old ways, when he was appreciated and when his country’s beauty was appreciated, and actively preserves them.  So I wanted his name to reflect what he was trying to do, and Custodio in Spanish means “guardian.”  This meaning of Custodio’s name also inspired the title of my story.      
 
ABSS: What about the other characters, what inspired their names?
 
Magida:  I played around with naming the multiple Argentinian passengers in the story, but since none of them played a big roll, I kept them nameless. I think keeping them nameless also works towards implying that the disinterested behavior they exhibited is more universal, which deepens why Custodio has grown to despise these natives: they continuously behave in this awful manner.
 
The only other named character in the story is Tadzio Anderson.  I wanted a clearly foreign name for him, so I combined an Italian first name and a common American surname.  I needed this foreignness in the name because I wanted this dreamy character to clearly highlight the subtext of the story that revolves around a foreigner’s status and respectfulness (compared to that of the natives).  More specifically, I borrowed the name ‘Tadzio’ from Thomas Mann’s character in Death In Venice.  I did this because I wanted my character to stand out clearly as an object of affection and desire, as Mann’s Tadzio did in his travel story.  I even borrowed some of my descriptions of Tadzio Anderson from Death In Venice, because Mann’s descriptions so successfully developed his Tadzio as this dreamy character, which I wanted Anderson to embody as well.
 
ABSS:  Did you refer to any other travel novels or common travel themes in your story?
 
Magida: Yes.  The entire photography scene that I used to showcase the obsession and end the story, was inspired by a major theme in Ian McEwan’s The Comfort of Strangers.  More broadly, I addressed some travel motifs such as the descriptions of a place, through Custodio’s knowledge of Argentina’s attractions.  I really think my story says a lot about the differences between natives and foreigners as well, and how familiarity with a place changes perception.
 
ABSS:  What do you hope readers will take away from this story?
 
Magida:  The main difference between my story and other travel stories is that it is from the point of view of someone on the service side of industry.  All of the travel fiction that I’ve recently read has the traveller or foreigner as the narrator. I hope my readers get something out of having a narrator on the opposite side of the industry.  It shows what the complicated relationship these service people have with tourists, and how much respect they can have for their industry and their country (this theme was inspired from a tour guide I once had in Israel and the pride he had for his country).  Moreover, I wanted to show someone on the service side of the tourist industry that was in transition, on a journey himself, so that my readers could further investigate this side of travel.

I really enjoyed Sputnik Sweetheart because it showed how travel could be interpersonal rather than geographical.  The prime example of this was how falling in love, for Sumire, seemed to offer her the same sensations that the characters from our other travel fictions have experienced.  The narrator of Sputnik Sweetheart even articulates some of these travel themes when he describes Sumire’s love: Sumire felt like she “didn’t have any choice. [Love] may very well be a special place, some place [she’s] never seen before.  Danger may be lurking there… But there’s no turning back” (25).  Just like the characters of the Sheltering Sky or Daisy Miller were heading into danger and could/did not turn back, Sumire doesn’t turn back from traveling into love. 
 
As the novel progresses, love continues to follow the travel themes we have constantly been exposed to.  In particular falling in love in Sputnik Sweetheart mirrors Sal’s journeys in Kerouac’s On The Road (Sputnik Sweetheart makes no attempt to hide this correlation, and instead confirms the similarities by often referring to Kerouac).  For example, Sputnik’s main character Sumire, is a writer who is in need of “time and experience” to advance her craft, and through the narrator “K” and love interest Miu it quickly becomes apparent that love and even sexual experiences are more specifically the type of experiences that Sumire needs.  In On The Road, the narrator Sal was also in need of “life experiences” and embarked on his journey to achieve them.
 
Interestingly, while Sal’s “life experiences” included love and sexual experiences, Sumire’s revolved around love and sex.  This is plainly identified in a conversation K and Sumire have about her writings in which Sumire says, “Time and experience.  There’s not much you can do about time… But experience? Don’t tell me that. I’m not proud of it, but I don’t have sexual desire.  And what sort of experience can a writer have if she doesn’t feel passion?” (17).  Clearly, Sumire’s needed experience revolves around jumpstarting her passion, which seems to mean having sex. 
 
This difference between Sal’s and Sumire’s “life experiences” (one just travel experiences, the other falling and love and discovering passion) highlights why I enjoyed this novel so much.  A travel can be like Sal and geographically move to achieve what they “need,” but just as powerful an experience can come from falling in love and looking for passion in one another. 

I love the wordplay Guo, through Zhuang, uses in her novel.  In fact my favorite part was the beginning of the novel when Zhuang was learning how to speak English; when she explained the complexities of the language and how scientific English can be.   Furthermore, I love how Zhuang injected her opinions throughout the story by spelling/forming words to stress how she reflected on their definitions.  For example, Zhuang spells illegal “ill-legal” (14) and “demon-strators” (25).

At first this obvious way of getting her point across, seemed cheap and childish (an opinion that aligned itself with the review on the front of cover of the novel, which described it as “childish and wise at the same time,” Los Angeles Times).  However, when I looked back on these misspelling I found it difficult to reduce the misspellings to only childish and comedic, especially when considering travel themes.

At first I thought these misspelling simply supplemented the definition of the word they were trying to represent.  For example, “ill-legal,” meaning something that is ill (or bad) according to the law, greatly helped defined the definition of the word illegal.  This reason for misspelling is a logical one because Zhuang, who is just learning the language, could reasonably practice spelling words this way in order to reinforce the words definitions.  However, this reason for misspelling does not seem to apply to all the uniquely spelled words in the book.

For example, when Zhuang spells “demon-strators” to represent demonstrators, it does more than simply reinforce the definition of demonstrator, as it powerfully adds a clearly negatively connotation to the word.  With this misspelling, Zhuang has made her opinion of demonstrators clear, she finds them “demonic” and she quickly reaffirms this opinion by writing about how she would not rally against the Chinese government because “Mao’s [words] work for [her]” (25).  Zhuang continues on to comment that Mao’s words do not work for everyone “in China now,” which further isolates her from the other Chinese people back home who demonstrate just like these British people. 

This scene, and the potential reason behind the misspelling of “demon-strators,” reminded of the first article we read for this class in which Pico Iyer wrote “we [travelers] become walking video screens and living newspapers, the only channels that can take people out of the censored limits of their homelands” (Why We Travel).  This assertion is clearly exemplified here as Zhuang in her reaction to the demonstrators (she is shocked at how happy the demonstrators go about with their yelling, since she is not used to it as is clear through her spelling of demonstrator) is exhibiting to the British how the Chinese react to demonstrations.  As reader’s, also using learning about Zhuang’s culture from her (like a “video screen”), these words are doubly powerful and reveal just how much natives learn about a visitor’s cultures just from the travellers reactions.

Interestingly, Zhuang made it clear that other Chinese people back home do demonstrate just like the British do.  Therefore Zhuang, in being the example of a Chinese person for these Brits, is “misinforming” the British people about China: Zhuang is a video screen that only represents the part of China that doesn’t approve of demonstrations, not the whole thing.  This powerfully highlights the danger in inferring a culture from one person, and how Iyer’s travel truth (that travelers are the informers for natives) has a detrimental side.

Clearly, these misspellings are more than ways for Zhuang to reinforce her English lessons, as they reveal her opinion of “Western” society and also inevitably expose what the British must be learning from her.  In this way, the misspellings are not just childish and comedic but rather poignant.

In both of these novellas we see our main characters take advantage of their foreign destinations.  While the past novels we have read deal with characters that also take advantage of their destinations, Dwight’s and Alice’s experiences abroad seem particularly centered around exploitation.  Interestingly, this exploitation is not only a product of the characters’ manipulative nature (in fact in Alice’s case it seems she is not originally abusive in this way), instead it I a product of India itself, which seems to welcome exploitation through its poverty and acceptance of outsourced jobs.
 
India’s poverty, prominently described in both novellas, offers Dwight and Alice a chance to be significant.  Dwight can stand out as a business mastermind, even though he contributes very little to the projects, because he is a white man from America.  More relating to the poverty, Dwight is able to act as a benefactor to the poor girls he sleeps with because these girls live in the nationally desperate conditions.  Alice too is able to stand out in India thanks to the same conditions.  She easily gets a job and shines because she posses unique educational skills that is celebrated in India (because India’s poverty requires that the nation is subservient to America in that it’s workers must perfect the “American language”).  In both of these cases, had India not been victimized by exploitation, neither Dwight nor Alice would have been able to assume their positions of power.
 
These new positions of power in the poverty stricken environment allow both Dwight and Alice to further take advantage by living lives that are seemingly unattainable back in the States: both Dwight and Alice live “double lives.”  Dwight is a businessman by day and a womanizing, “takes-what-he-wants” man that goes on perverse sexual escapades at night.  Alice also leads a double life: she lives in the ashram by day and works in the ideologically opposing, capitalist Electric City in the afternoons. 
 
Once again the poverty of Indian, and the characters’ superiority seems to allow offer the easy option of living these double lives (because no one it seems is truly checking up on these superior people). However Dwight’s case is particularly perverse in the way that he enjoys his superiority in India.  Dwight makes this most clear as he remembers his feelings about sleeping with Sumitra, “It was reckless, but he was in India. Who cared?” (103).  This sort of world without consequences is a clear product of rich people feeling superior in a poverty stricken environment.
 
I am not willing to reduce Alice’s motives and enjoyment of poverty stricken India to such a perverse level as Dwight’s.  Nonetheless, as mentioned above, India’s poverty does catalyze Alice’s ability to be superior and live double lives.  At home, despite her prestigious degree and intelligence, Alice is reduced and defined by her looks.  However, India, concerned more with capitalist gain to reduce poverty, is infatuated with her ability as a moneymaker.  However, Alice too makes exploitative decisions with this new power as she continues to train her students to be rude Americans, even after she notices the horrible personality she is creating and promoting.   
 
Overall, I believe these two novellas offer our class new motives for travel, in which the traveler enjoys their time abroad because they assume power in this destination thanks to the destination’s poverty.  However, Theroux also suggests that these travels have to wake up sometime from the their love for their superiority, and this can be a a very rude awakening.

The irony in the title of the book The Comfort of Strangers is apparent from the interactions that the main characters have with the brutal antagonists.  However, when considering the travel industry, this book also highlights how tourism and comfort have a unique relationship.
 
It is expected that businesses that have a tourist clientele would treat their guests with respect and extra courtesy.  This is reflected in the hospitality industry and in the book.  At the hotel, Colin and Mary are extremely pleased with how the maid makes their bed, and how anything can be brought up to them.  In fact, they grow to expect this coddling.
 
Therefore, when they do not receive such respect they are shocked.   This is shown in the book when Colin and Mary find a seat in the square labeled as one “of the greatest tourist destinations.”   The couple cannot find a seat, they cannot get service, and the waiter, once he arrives, is rude and condescending.  It is clear that the businesses do not always care about what their clientele expect.
 
This scene highlights a unique aspect of tourism.  While destinations certainly cater towards their tourist clients (for example Venice as a city, was willing to cover up illness in Death of Venice), sometimes they refuse this courtesy.  Interestingly we see this happen in a place that is overly saturated with tourist activity, suggesting that the rude waiter in the square did not need to fight for tourists because there were just so many of them.
 
This all highlights that we need to keep an eye out when judging the comfort of strangers.  We, as tourists, are commodities and if we want respect and courtesy we just need to know where to go to find it (tourist destinations, but not the oversaturated ones).  This idea of tourists as commodities is clearly and creepily reflected in the book: Colin was a commodity for the antagonists and ended dead.

Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice adds a new facet to the geographic analysis of travel that we focused on in our midterms.  This novella accomplishes this geographic facet by alluding that the geographic city of Venice has the capacity to express human emotions.  When disease strikes the city, Mann describes the cover-up in a way that suggests that Venice as a city was a deceitful participant in the cover-up: “in mid-May of this year, on one and the same day, the dread vibrios had been discovered in blackened corpses in Venice.  The cases were kept secret.  The Venetian authorities issued a statement to the effect that health conditions had never been better… the chief medical officer of Venice, a man of outstanding merit had resigned from his post and been quietly replaced by a more pliable individual” (120-122).
 
Through his constant use of the word Venice, Mann drills the point home that the city is responsible for this cover-up.  Even though Mann clarifies that it is only the top officials making sure the truth does get out, he seems to blame the geographic city of Venice as well.
 
Mann does not assign this human emotion of deceit to the city of Venice out of nowhere.  In his buildup to the reveal of the city’s cover-up, he develops the city as having its own entity.  For example, near the end of the book, the main character Aschenbach is constantly remarking about how the city is producing a medicinal effluvia.  Again, Mann clarifies how it is the police that are causing this noxious smell, yet to Aschenbach it seems that the city of Venice itself is oozing the smell as its way of attempting to curtail the spread of the illness that it is covering up.
 
Once again, all the cover-ups are ultimately explained as being masterminded and carried out by humans.  Nonetheless, Mann makes special efforts to blame the city of Venice as well.  He points to the fact that literally every native Venetian is willing to be part of the cover-up: the hotel workers, the performers and the barber all lie to Aschenbach when he inquires about the illness.  Mann explains how “fear of the overall damage that would be done – concern over the recently opened art exhibition in the Public Garden and the tremendous losses with which the hotels, the shops, the entire, multifaceted tourist trade would be threatened in the case of panic and loss of confidence - proved stronger in the city than the love of truth and respect for international covenants” (122).  In this passage Mann hints that every Venetian seemed to innately understand why they should lie (to save the city), and this almost rehearsed cover-up seems to suggest that the city of Venice itself is deceitful and malicious: as man says “fear of the overall damage that would be done... proved stronger in the city than the love of truth” (122).

Interestingly, as the city of Venice deceitfully lies and covers-up it encourages further crime within it's city borders, yet again refuses to stop the lies.  Mann's description of this decline of Venice as self-imposed further suggests how the city is not only deceitful but also suffers consequences and has to deal with responsibility just like a human does.

Although there are many reasons why people travel, the narrators in Ernest Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and Jack Kerouac’s On the Roadseem to travel for the same reason.  As writers, Jake and Sal need life experiences for literary content.  Therefore, they use traveling as a way of accessing the experiences that they need.  However, as writers sensitive to the nuances of life experiences, they crave and seek out only those experiences that are “authentic.”  This suggests that each geographic location has both artificial and “authentic” aspects, and that it is in these “authentic” parts of a place where our narrators find the life experiences that they need. 
 
This concept of artifice and authentic within a location can be explained through a physical breakdown of the geography.  Yi-Fu Tuan explains in his essay “An Experiential Perspective,” how geography can be classified on a physical scale: ranging from the largest classification, a nation-state, to the smallest classification, an object in one’s home.  When applying this physical concept of geography to authenticity an interesting inverse relationship emerges: the larger the geographic location the less intimate the experience with the location is.  This makes sense, since the larger the geographic location is, the less one would be able to intimately experience it firsthand (tap into it authentically), and the more one would have to rely on second-hand (more artificial) symbolism for their understanding of the place.
 
Considering this concept of geographic breakdown, the goal of each narrator, in searching for the authentic, would be to look for authenticity in the small geographic locations.  For our authors, this translates into breaking down where they travel into microcosms that can then be investigated.  This practice is particularly apparent in Kerouac’s On the Road in which Sal offers the step-by-step process that he used to break down America in his search for authenticity.  At the beginning of the trip, Sal has a very foreign, distant and second-hand relationship with his ultimate travel goal, San Francisco.  His interaction with this city, is solely through looking at a map: “I’d been pouring over maps of the United States in Paterson for months, even reading.” (Kerouac, 8-9).  As Sal’s journey begins “geographic size” begins to decrease: for example, during this trip, the goal at first is California, then “Frisco,” then the bars of “Frisco” and finally to a particular spot in these bars (directly in front of the jazz band).  Only after arriving in this particular spot is Sal, able to truly have authentic experiences that not only provide insight about “Frisco,” but also authentic thoughts about life in general.  This authentic, epiphany-like experience is exhibited through Sal’s description of Dean: “Dean was directly in front of him [the tenorman] with his face lowered to the bell of the horn, clapping his hands, pouring sweat on the man’s keys… Dean was in a trance ” (Kerouac, 187).  Overall, Sal’s step-by-step geographic downsizing, which ends with an epiphany-like experience, confirms that small geographic spaces are necessary for fully accessing the authentic.
 
This scene, of Dean dancing, illuminates how the amount of time spent in a place (“geographic time”) is also a part of achieving an authentic understanding of the location. However, unlike the inverse relationship between geographic size and authentic experiences, the relationship between “geographic time” and authentic experiences is one of a direct relationship.  This means, as “geographic time” (time spent in a place) increases, authenticity also increases. This is why, for example, in Paul Bowles’s A Sheltering Sky, there is clear reference made about the quality of the traveler and the amount of time he/she spends traveling: “He [Port] was did not think of himself as a tourist; he was a traveler.  The difference is partly one of time, he would explain.  Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler… moves slowly” (Bowles, 6).  This claim confirms that the more time spent traveling the more experience you have with the places making you a more authentic traveler.
 
In On The Road, Kerouac adds yet another dimension to the relationship of time and authenticity.  Sal, through Dean’s input, explains how time seems to stand still when an authentic experience is happening.  This is because the person having the authentic experience is too fully consumed to worry about time passing by.  However, Sal offers an important outside vantage point of Dean’s aforementioned (dancing) experience: while Dean in his trance may have felt that time stood still, Sal observed that quite a bit of time actually did pass by: the tenorman played an entire set. This confirms the direct relationship between “geographic time” and authentic experiences, in that only with this large amount of time was Dean able to have an authentic experience.   Time allowed him to investigate and then reinvestigate (etc.) the small place he was in, which allowed him to truly get to know the place and its intricacies.
 
Interestingly, Tuan explains in his essay that authentic intimate locales are often times not what are typically called geographic locations.  Things such as chairs or cars can also be places, in that that they are centers of meaning, and are made meaningful because they fulfill the “criteria” for authentic and firsthand experiences: geographic size and geographic time.  Interestingly, the authors confirm the geographic power of these small objects by using thier geographic connotations to enhance their scenes.  In The Sun Also Rises, very intimate scenes occur in taxis: early in the book and then at the end we find Jake and Brett in a taxi, “We were sitting apart and we jolted close together going down the old street. The street was dark again and I kissed her” and then “The driver started up the street. I settled back. Brett moved close to me. We sat close against each other. I put my arm around her and she rested against me comfortable” (Hemingway, 33,251).  Hemmingway seems to use the very intimate proximity that cars create, again is thanks to their geographic size, to enhance the intimacy of his scene.
 
In On The Road, a corner of a house reaps the benefits of “geographic size” and “geographic time.” The character Old Bull Lee Bull Lee has this authentic relationship with a corner in his house, as Sal explains, “He sat in his chair… the shades by his chair were always drawn, day and night; it was his corner of the house” (Kerouac, 135).  Through this detailed explanation, Sal confirms Bull Lee’s first hand relationship with the corner, which clearly developed out of geographic size (it’s a small corner) and geographic time (it is implied that he sat there every day).   Kerouac uses this geographic power of the corner, like Hemmingway used the geographic power of the car, to enhance his point: Kerouac had been making Bull Lee out to be very intellectual and wise, and by showing how he had such an authentic relationship with his home, the place where he studies, Kerouac adds legitimacy to this portrayal of Old Bull Lee.
 
In all of these ways, the narrators of the travel novels we have read achieve access to authentic experiences, by locating authenticity in small “geographic size” and long “geographic time.”  As illuminated in the Old Bull Lee example, a great source of authenticity is home and objects in the home because they enjoy the intimacy and the authenticity benefits of “geographic size” and “geographic time.” Home is therefore a powerful geographic influence for travelers, in that it provides them with a set of authentic geographic expectations to carry with them no matter where they travel: often time people try to locate the authentic comforts home while abroad.  In this way, due to its geographic power home experiences may be an underlying influence in all of our travels.

Yi-Fu Tuan defines a “place” as a center of meaning. Tuan continues to assert that there are different units of “place” ranging in geographic size: places range from items in a home to obviously larger units such as nation – states.  Interestingly, Tuan suggests that each uniquely “geographically sized place” requires a similarly unique relationship to the location (or thing). For example, Tuan intuitively suggests that in order to appreciate “home items” as a “place” one must have a much more personal first-person experience with the items, whereas in order to consider a nation-state as a “place” one is influenced by more second-hand accounts.
 
In On The Road, the character Old Bull Lee clearly and interestingly exhibits both the first person, and second person relationships with “places”.  Bull Lee’s more intimate, first person relationship with “place”, is nearly identical to an example Tuan gives in his essay.  Tuan offers the example of a chair as this “place”: “Places may be private to the individual.  My favorite rocking chair, wedged between the fireplace and the curtained window, is my special place within the house” (153).  Bull Lee’s almost has an identical “place” in his house: “He sat in his chair… the shades by his chair were always drawn, day and night; it was his corner of the house” (135).  Besides the obvious physical similarities between these two places, these “places” are similar in that it is the people that empower the “places”.  It is the first person experiences that each individual has with their chair that makes it a “place” (center of meaning) for them.
 
Old Bull Lee also has a relationship with more distant locations that are made into “places” thanks to second-person relationships.  These relationships are explained when Sal is describing Bull Lee’s travels: “In Paris he sat at café tables, watching the sullen French faces go by.  In Athens he looked up from his ouzo at what he called the ugliest people in the world. In English hotels he read Spengler and Marquis de Sade…” (134). Bull Lee’s experiences in these countries are clearly through a second-person point of view, because all of his experiences are through very cliché and obviously set-up lenses.   This makes sense since Bull Lee, spending only a short time in each of these locations, would not be imposing meaning on the place, but instead would be extracting the meaning from clichéd influences.
 
Bull Lee’s relationship with these foreign “places” also highlights how “place” plays into our class discussions about authenticity.  Tuan seems to suggest that to truly have a personal connection with a place one must impose the meaning upon the place.  In this way, to get to the authentic feel of different countries one must, as Tuan suggests, impose meaning upon the country by spending time in the place.  However, these “inauthentic” clichés had to derive from someone/somewhere.  Tuan offers this explanation: “In a large unit of space people may have common experiences of nature and work” (159).  In this way, the clichés may in fact be the authentic development of the native people; however from our discussions, it turns out that these clichés are often inaccurate representations of the life of the natives.  Therefore, to make foreign countries a “place” (by accessing the authentic) one must interestingly be an active traveler and impose their own meaning on the location.

All of the travel fictions we have read so far have dealt with the inevitable travel theme of moving on (that is, when its time to continue the journey or return from the journey).  This concept was further highlighted by the characteristics of the different tourists that we discussed: only the existential tourist seems to stay put while the others certainly deal with the theme of moving on.

I bring this theme up after reading Kerouac because in this novel the theme of the “time to move on” is very stressed.  Throughout Sal’s journey West he is constantly stopping along the way.  However, Sal ends each one of these stops by saying, “the time was coming for me to leave.”  It is clear that while traveling there is a definite amount of appropriate time for each stop, then its time to go.

Interestingly, in this road trip, this definite amount of time revolves around convenience.  Sal stays in a place until things begin to go sour.  He stays in Denver until he screws thing up with a girl and feels like the city is one big hangover.  He stays in San Francisco until as he says in ‘Sal style’, “The time was coming for me to leave Frisco or I’d go crazy.”  This seems to be the magic of the road trip: you stay until you want to go, and then you just go.

However, in order to just go you need to have some sort of destination.  The destination is crucial; Sal can say oh time to move on from this soured placed (Denver for example) only because he has a place and a goal to move on to (San Fran).  Sal can then only leave San Fran because he plans to meet up with the crew in Texas.  In this way, the “freedom” of the road trip is counter-intuitively derived from always having a goal and destination.

This concept brings up a question about the potential negative effects of this travel cycle.  If you are constantly looking ahead you may not enjoy the present.  This is clear in Sal’s journey: by all rights Sal should have loved to stay in Denver with his crew, but because he had San Fran in his sights he didn’t give it a full chance, instead he moved on.  However, on the flip side, constantly having the a place to go allows certain freedoms: Sal might not of had the confidence or courage to sleep with the girl in Denver if he hadn’t known he could escape the next day.

I am not sure if all of these themes are applicable to all other types of travels and journeys.  However, these themes certainly seems to characterize road trips of the time, where you had the freedom to just stick your thumb out and escape toward your next destination.

Port seems to be a tourist that fits into the “Experiential Mode.”  He is as Cohen suggests a “disenchanted and alienated individual becoming growingly aware of this state of alienation” (186).  This fits Port exactly: he and Kit for this matter are fed up with the West particularly their engagement in vicious wars, and know they no longer find or want to find, what Cohen calls, their “centres” within America.  Furthermore, Port’s journey in purpose and execution seems to exactly follow that of an “experiential tourist.”  Cohen suggests that experimental tourists are searching for the authentic and that “somewhere just not here, in another country, in another social class, perhaps there is a genuine society” (186).  This excerpt suggests that the tourist is “pretentiously” (186) searching for a more “primitive”(185) world to find the genuine, which perfectly explains Port, who literally drags his riches (in the form of luggage) through this more primitive land.
 
While Port may be an “experiential tourist,’ Paul Bowles seems to be an “experimental tourist.”  We know that Bowles was fed up with America, which to him seemed to have its “centre” based in competition.  Therefore Bowles left in search of a new culture with a more accommodating centre.  This fits into what Cohen describes as the “experimental tourist:” these tourists “do not adhere anymore to the centre of their own society, but engage in a quest for alternative [centres].”  Cohen continues to suggest that these tourists may use drugs to find their centres, which Bowles does.  However, geographically once in Morocco Bowles no longer searched for a geographic centre, however through writing, drug use, and promiscuous sexual experimentation he seemed to always be an “experimental tourist” always looking for his centre.
 
Comparing these two people Port and Bowles, begs the questions of which tourist got the better deal?  Although Port dies in his quest for a centre he also achieves his goal of finding the ultimate authenticity.  Bowles on the other hand searched and searched, constantly experimenting and trying to find his centre.  In comparing an experiential tourist and an experimental tourist, one notices many similarities, and one can certainly notice similarities in Port and Bowles: particularly their distaste for American culture. And, it is interesting how a similar distaste can lead to two different quest for a “centre”.

We have discussed how travel offers a great deal of freedom and an opportunity for escape, and how people travel in order to yield these exact benefits.  However, there is a clear flipside to these benefits and that is trust.  Travel and trust have a very inverse relationship it seems.  Time abroad, especially in the novels we have read, is linked to letting go and truly enjoying freedom, and usually this is explored through emotional or physical infidelity.
 
In all of the novels we have read, going abroad always seems to imply that it is time to be unfaithful.  In Daisy Miller, Winterbourne leaves a mistress back home to pursue Daisy.  In the Sun Also Rises, Cohn, who has a fiancé back in Paris, travels to pursue Brett.  The men, during their travels, are devoted obsessively to these new women, and certainly go abroad with the hope of advancing their relationships. 
 
Now we get to The Sheltering Sky, where infidelity is immediately showcased.  Although the main character Port, who is married to Kit, did not follow a women abroad (a potential step up from the characters in the other novels) he certainly is not faithful to his wife.  This is obvious when a walk through the outskirts of the city quickly turns into a visit to a “dancer.”  During this long walk (to the dancer), Port thinks about his wife Kit: “a faint vision began to haunt his mind… It was Kit, seated by and open window, filling her nails, and looking out over the town” (16).  Throughout the walk, Port continues to have flashbacks of Kit and how she is watching him, how she and Tunner may be having an affair, and how much of a hassle Kit can be (we are later exposed to the difficult, and dramatically emotional life Kit leads).  By the time Port finally arrives at the “dancer” it is clear that Port and what he is about to do is to escape Kit and her ‘baggage.’  Port then promptly cheats on Kit with the dancer (Marhnia). 
 
In this way time abroad is linked to infidelity.  Time abroad seems like the perfect time to act on one’s desires.  As exemplified in Port’s walk, this may be because while traveling one can escape a partner (and the ‘baggage’ that comes with relationships) and become ‘single’ again, potentially appealing opportunity.  No matter the motives, time spent traveling seems to be the perfect opportunity to be unfaithful.  This is why during travel it is almost expected to hear lines such as the one Tunner says to Kit: “He ordered champagne.  ‘At a thousand francs a bottle!’ she remonstrated. ‘Port would have a fit!’ ‘Port isn’t here’ Tunner said” (60).
 
It is probably unfair to completely marry travel with infidelity.  However, traveling is a time for escape, a time to live large and free, and a time to pursue desires.  People certainly can attain all of these benefits without being unfaithful, but this has not been the case for the characters we have seen travel.  It is important to note that these characters all seem to be from a high economic and social class.  I bring this up because; the infidelity may be linked to this higher societal position, rather than to the traveling (we would probably expect some of these characters to have affairs back home).   However, something about travel seems to bring out the infidelity in all types of people: it is why people leave weddings rings at home when they travel for business, and why spouses call to monitor trips.  The travel industry even exploits this idea that romance, or at least sex, is waiting for anyone if they travel abroad (posters showcase the beauty and the romantic eagerness of women to advertise different countries).  Therefore, in these ways, travel is certainly tied with infidelity.

“Want to have a drink?” “No,” said Bill. “I don’t need it” (83).  This line is shocking to hear in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, a novel that follows the escapades of alcoholics.  In following these adventures, the novel clearly comments on this “time of dissolution and desolation of the post-World War I period” which clearly catalyzed alcoholism (Jeffery Schwarz’s "The Saloon Must Go, and I Will Take it With Me”).  However, Hemingway’s novel also comments on how travel can play an important role in alcohol use/abuse.
 
During the first part of the novel, in Paris, those who visit the main character (Jake) seem to be less reliant on alcohol.  People such as Count Mippipopolous andBill Groton limit themselves from alcohol, as they do not need to get drunk to have a good time.  The count, who although certainly drinks, drinks for taste and spends a great deal of time locating the best liquor.  He even coaches Brett on how to drink, encouraging her to savor the taste rather than simply get drunk: “There my dear. Now you enjoy that slowly, and then you can get drunk” (66).  Bill Groton is similar in that although he likes to drink, he will limit himself (as exhibited in the aforementioned quote).
           
What allows these men to limit themselves unlike their Parisian counterparts?  They have ‘lived life,’ and no longer rely so heavily on alcohol to have a good time.  The count has traveled far and wide, has fought in wars and it is because all of this he can enjoy life: he announces to Jake, “it is because I have lived very much that now I can enjoy everything so well” (67).  The same is true of Bill, although he has not led as an impressive life as the count, he surely has lived a lot: Bill arrives in Paris with a grand story of his involvement in a boxing fight in Vienna.  In this way, it is their life experiences, particularly their travel experiences that allow these to men to enjoy life even without constant inebriation.
 
Jake certainly seems to be missing ‘life experiences’ in his life.  Hemingway highlights these problems through the use of the character Robert Cohen.  Cohen brings up that he wants to travel because he has “that feeling that all [his] life is going by and [he’s] not taking advantage of it” while he ferments in Paris (19).  Although Jake resists this idea, it is clear from the repetitive and workaholic nature of his daily life that he needs these ‘life experience’ that Robert is describing.
 
Hemingway then delivers a ‘life experience’ to Jake, in the form the ‘fiestas.’ Interestingly, Jake’s experience parallels Bill Groton’s experience.  Both experiences are focused on sporting events (which becomes a cultural subtext of the novel), both experiences deal with having a personal relationship with the star athlete (Jake meets spends time with Pedro Romero, and Bill meets and gets to know the boxer the in Vienna), and finally both experiences involve lots of alcohol.  In the end, almost poetically, Jake, although still drinking, is happy to sojourn from heavy alcoholism in San Sebastian, just like Bill exhibited control over his drinking.  Although a few things can account for this change, Hemingway seems to imply that traveling and life experiences allow for a more sober enjoyment of life.

“American candy is the best,” “American men are the best,” “American girls are the best,” and for some, the best part of Vevey and Rome are the Americans (pp. 6, Daisy Miller).  Henry James’ novel follows the travels of an ‘archetypical’ American young woman, Daisy Miller, as she participates in the travel trend of her time: in the latter half of the nineteenth century wealthy Americans went on tours of Europe to attain social status by dabbling in the refined society of that continent (http://filer.case.edu/~cjh18/james.html).  However, James’ novel illuminates how some Americans, rather than spending their time abroad to experience non-American cultures, invented their own societies within foreign countries that solely focused on the lives of other visiting Americans.
 
The main characters in Daisy Miller who use there time abroad in this way are Mrs. Costello and Mrs. Walker.  This is because these two women are thoroughly Europeanized, which affords them the ability to look down upon their countrymen who struggle to fit into these European societies.  It is clear that this is what these two women are most concerned about throughout the novel. For example, in Vevey, Mrs. Costello, only emerges from her room to voice her disapproval of Miss Miller and upon Winterbourne’s arrival in Rome, she knows exactly where to find the American tourists.
 
The same is true, if not worse, of Mrs. Walker.  In a dramatic scene, Mrs. Walker hurries through the busy streets of Rome to catch Daisy, and upon her catching up she says to Mr. Winterbourne, “After you had all left me, just now, I could not sit still for thinking of it.  It seemed too pitiful, not even to attempt to save her.  I ordered the carriage and put on my bonnet, and came here as quickly as possible” (pp. 42, Daisy Miller).  These two women are obsessed with their American subjects, and they are not the only ones: Mrs. Costello hosted a meeting in which a “dozen of the American colonists in Rome came to talk [about Daisy]” (pp. 54, Daisy Miller).  Importantly, this meeting was held at St. Peter’s Church in Rome, and the juxtaposition of this meeting with the ornately beautiful services of St. Peter’s illuminates what these women are giving up in order to gossip about their American prey: “The vespor-service was going forward in splendid chants and organ-tones in the adjacent choir, and meanwhile, between Mrs. Costello and her friends, there was a great deal said about poor Miss Miller’s going really ‘ too far’” (pp. 54, Daisy Miller).
 
The best part of Europe for these Europeanized women is concerning themselves with, gossiping about and looking down upon Daisy as she tests her American practices in Vevey and Rome.  These women focus on and live for Daisy’s life, so much so that they neglect their own time abroad.  Although these women seem like extreme cases, they show how living abroad never really erases one’s connection and interest in home.  Furthermore, these women show that unless travelers vigilantly avoid it, their experience abroad may develop into one that exclusively includes people of the same nationality  -- as James’ novel reflects, people with common identities, in this case wealthy Americans in the late 19th century, tend to flock together even when (perhaps especially when) abroad.
 

I worked in rural Kenya as a teacher at the Baraka School for Boys, and the irony killed me.  At this school, a select few boys travel from Baltimore, Maryland to Kenya in order to receive a better education: as Richard, my student reflected before his travels, “I’m going to Africa to be somebody.” I can proudly announce that these boys did brighten their futures, but it is just too ironic that these Americans had to come to Kenya to do so.

In Baltimore, trouble is always outside the door: the only sound that drowns out the emergency sirens is the sound of police helicopters.  Therefore when recruiters for Baraka go to Baltimore middle schools they preach the truth by saying that the probable future for these Baltimore boys is an “orange jumper and fancy bracelets.”  However, if a recruiter were to visit Kenyan schools they would truthfully preach that extreme poverty, disease and death are what threaten Kenyan boys.   In this way Africa is a “trade down” for these American boys, yet it is where they thrive.

Despite the irony, I accept that it is Kenya that catalyzes the progress that these boys make.  I know that the Baraka school succeeds thanks to something more than caring dedicated teachers; because they have caring dedicated teachers back in Baltimore.  Therefore, I am led to believe that the things that make this school work, the things that I love about Kenya are that the boys get to worry about hedgehogs.

Hedgehogs populate our school complex.  They sneak into our rooms, get in our stuff, but no matter where they are found they make a cute addition.  Everyone loves them, especially the boys from Baltimore.  In fact, the boys become protective parents for the hedgehogs.  They watch them, shelter them, play with them and will even stop fighting when they spot them (bringing a hedgehog into a room where the boys are fighting is a foolproof way to swiftly stall the conflict). 

In this way these little creatures show the beauty of Kenya.  Retreating from Baltimore to Kenya may not offer these boys a safer nor more comforting landscape.  However, this change of scenery allows the boys to seclude themselves and only worry about protecting their hedgehogs.  Therefore, I have learned that when a boy’s only worry is his hedgehog, he can grow – and traveling to Africa is exactly what this offers the boys of Baltimore. 

Quotes in the above passage are adaptations of what was recorded in Heidi Ewing's and Rachel Grady's documentary "The Boys of Baraka"