Violette's blog

The sun crept into the compartment of the Golden Pass Line of the Swiss Rail peaking through the drawn curtain. Grant sat with his hands folded over the cover of The Comfort of Strangers on his lap. He wore a navy Henley with the top three buttons undone and a modest chestnut belt. His brown hair was tousled slightly and his ice blue eyes rested on the drape.

Audrey walked slowly through the corridor of the train. On her arm was a golden satchel; a porter followed her with two oversized Louis Vuitton pieces of luggage. Her long dark hair was kept in a fashionable bun and a soft bang swept across her angular face.

“Excusez-moi!” she yelped in a high-pitched voice as two little Swiss girls in matching patterned outfits rushed past her, holding pieces of broken chocolate that were melting in their hands. She stopped immediately to examine her tight fitting off the shoulder burgundy dress “Ouf, dieu merci,” she exclaimed and turned to the gentleman holding her bags. “Who is watching those children?” she asked judgmentally with a thick French accent.

“Mademoiselle,” the porter began softly. She held her thin hand up gracefully and pointed towards her ring finger where a large diamond surrounded by rubies shone. “My apologies, Madame. You see, the children are just returning to their compartment. I assure you they will be of no inconvenience to you.”

“You assure me?” she narrowed her pointed hazel eyes at him as the gold bands that hung on her thin wrist jingled.

“Oui Madame, if you experience any—“ At that moment a group of men she took for natives erupted from a cabin in front of them in shabby clothes clinking bottles of Feldschlossen and laughing heartily.

“Difficulté,” she finished for him and then pointed fiercely to the compartment to their left, “This one.” She moved towards it to remove herself from the path of the drunken men.

“Mais, Madame, this one is occupés.”
She ignored his remark and snatched the large bags from his gloved hands as she slid herself into the small room, shutting the door behind her. She sighed deeply as she pressed her thin body against the door.

“ ’Ello lovely,” Grant’s voice startled her, causing her polished hand to fly to her chest.

“Dieu,” she sighed as she let the bags drop to the ground, “I apologize, sir I-”

“Sit,” he motioned to the seat across from him, “No apology necessary, company is welcome.”

“Not all, I suppose,” she muttered softly as she seated herself carefully and situated her belongings, “There are such dreadful people out there.”

“There are dreadful people everywhere.” He commented solemnly. 

She nodded, “But out there are children with fingers dripping in chocolate, they nearly decorated my robe.”

“We are in Switzerland,” he noted politely, “Chocolate is everywhere, and they are just children.”

“Oui,” she replied, “But there are men in the hallway shouting. Every travel book I’ve read on Switzerland says that Swiss train etiquette is founded on respectful silence.”

“Also on privacy and discretion,” he added.

“Exactement!” she exclaimed.

“Yet you entered an occupied compartment regardless of this knowledge.” He was cleverer than she thought. “Perhaps, these men are tourists such as yourself.”

“Moi, a tourist?” she repeated turning her nose upwards. “I beg your pardon sir.”

“Forgive me if I’m mistaken, you seemed unfamiliar with the customs.”

“With customs that are contrary to what has been described to me by—“

“Guide books,” he finished.

“Mais oui.” She pouted.

 “Take a gander out the window,” he motioned.

They both turned to see the landscape of Central Switzerland spread out across the pane. The frosted tips of the mountains touched the clear blue sky. “A guide book tells you very little.” She let out a gasp at the enormity of the picturesque scene in front of her and brought her thin hand to her rouged lip. “Of what a place is really like.”

“Beau never mentioned this,” she sighed desolately.

“Beau?” he repeated.

“Count Beau Fitzroy,” she corrected. “I am to be Lady Fitzroy soon,” she held out the diamond.

“A regular Lady Ashley,” he chuckled.

“Pardon?”

“Oh nothing, you reminded me of someone.”

“Someone lovely, I hope,”

“You could say that,” he smiled. “Where does Lady Fitzroy travel?”

“Le Montreux Palace,” she smiled back. “Et toi?”

“Just going,” he replied. He didn’t ask about the Count. He presumed that little besides his status enchanted her; she was traveling unaccompanied, it was a fair assumption.

“Going?” she repeated as she crossed her legs.

“Following the rail,” he stated simply. “Seeing where life takes me.”

“Mais pourquoi?” she asked leaning forward. “Don’t you miss everything?”

“You experience it,” he replied and slid impulsively next to her. “Have you ever tasted Swiss Chocolate?”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” she resisted as she put a hand coyly to her narrow waist.

Ignoring her response, he removed a truffle from his pocket and unwrapped it, pressing it to her lips. Her eyes widened at its richness. ”Incroyable!” she sucked in the cream.

He was mesmerized by the pleasure the chocolate had induced. He saw his reflection in the window grabbing her face and drawing her to him, kissing her deeply. Feeling impetuous after tasting the unwrapped treat, she would kiss back, hard. He could see his figure fastening the lock of the compartment as she tugged at his belt, she intoxicated by sweetness and he by her naïveté. In the window the image of their bodies would entwine as they traveled from Lucerne over the Brunig Pass.

There was something about sharing intimacy as the train carried the world past them that stirred him. It didn’t matter where they were going, for an instant their lives moved harmoniously like the friction of wheels against steel. For a moment they could watch the scene change just slowly enough to make out the ridges of the mountaintop.

“Pardon.” They both turned as an unfamiliar face entered the compartment. 

The moment passed.  


Sadomasochist Robert Sits Down With The Author 

Robert: English is a beautiful language, full of misunderstandings. Can you help clear some of those in the intentions of your story?
 
Violette: Delighted to. The intention was to describe a moment before two travelers arrive at their destination. In On The Road, Kerouac signals the importance of this moment and how the means of getting somewhere, i.e., the experience, is just as important, if not more important, than the “there” itself. Grant references this in his line, “Just going,” and his emphasis on his traveling for experience.
 
Robert: I see. Could you explain your narrative selection?
 
Violette: I decided to write as an observer, similar to the narrative style in The Sheltering Sky, Daisy Miller andThe Comfort of Strangers, to tell the story from a third party view. I wanted to be able to capture the scene from both Audrey and Grant’s perspectives without favoring either party.
 
Robert: It’s interesting that you mentioned The Comfort of Strangers, any reason why it’s on Grant’s lap?
 
Violette: I’m glad you noticed that. I placed that there to make the parallel between the interaction of the two strangers in the train and the encounter between you and Mary and Colin in McEwan’s novel.
 
Robert: Quite an encounter. Now for the specifics, I’ve never done anything unintentionally; I’m assuming you are the same.
 
Violette: Indeed. Every detail about the scenery that the pair observes out the window, the luxury resort Le Montreux Palace where Audrey plans to stay, and the cheap beer in the hands of the drunken men, Feldschlossen, are accurate to Switzerland. I borrowed this technique of factual inclusions from both Kerouac and Hemingway to make the story more real.
 
Robert: Speaking of Hemingway, care to reveal any literary allusions?
 
Violette: Surely. Audrey was modeled both on Bowles’ Kit and Hemingway’s Brett. Grant references this by Audrey’s soon to be “Lady” status, which corresponds to Brett becoming Lady Ashley. She is like Kit in her excessive carrying of luggage, and borrows from both women in her glamorous nature. Having the scene occur on the train reflects what transpires in Bowles’ novel between Kit and Tunner. There is a romantic element about train travel that he employed that I wanted to experiment with.
 
Robert: Ah, experiments. Now what’s with the guidebooks? I prefer being led to very good places by strangers.
 
Violette: That’s most like Grant’s view, but Audrey represents a different traveler. She is a tourist because she follows the guidebooks dutifully and treats the porter with little respect, assuming authority. She studies the etiquette of the Swiss and does not understand that real Swiss life exists off the page, as do tourists like herself.
 
Robert: Hmm, now about the chocolate? I once ate two packets of cooking chocolate…
 
Violette: The chocolate is significant because it is a staple of Switzerland. On the children’s fingertips it represents both the native and the primitive and by eating it, Audrey comes closer to both. Her reaction unlocks something in Grant, which causes him to fantasize in a way similar to Paradise in On The Road.
 
Robert: I’m sorry to say we’ve run past our word count. I’m going to attend to some personal matters with my wife Caroline. 


Bowles, Paul  The Sheltering Sky
Hemingway, Ernest  The Sun Also Rises 
James, Henry  Daisy Miller 
Kerouac, Jack  On The Road
McEwan, Ian  The Comfort of Strangers 

A thread that has been woven through almost all of the travel fictions that we have explored this semester is the connection between writing and traveling. At first it seemed a mere coincidence that characters like Kerouac’s Sal Paradise, Hemingway’s Jake and Mann’s Aschenbach were all novelists who alike desired to travel. Though the other authors hinted in this direction, Murakami seems to me to be the most direct (reviled by Kerouac, of course) about blatantly revealing why his main character finds travel so appealing and why in most cases it is necessary for a writers progression. As Sumire’s Sputnik Sweetheart Miu points out to her during their first lunch,  “At this stage in your life I don’t think you’re going to write anything worthwhile…now’s not the time. The strength you need to open that door isn’t quite there. Haven’t you ever felt that way?” (37). Sumire’s response, “Time and experience,” shows that indeed she has, and that she is cognitively aware that there is something preventing her writing from transcending from words on a page to beautiful literature.

Though Sumire dropped out of college in order to pursue her writing and has days completely devoted to it, she finds herself still unable to write works “that had both a beginning and an end” (12). This immaturity or lack of experience is expressed in several of the other novels in which the main characters struggle with how to write about a world that they are not fully engaged in. I believe Sumire’s obsession with Jack Kerouac says a lot about her feelings as both a writer and a world traveler. From the beginning of the novel it is known that everything from her clothes to her attitude is based upon his literary works and begs the question of whether she is molding her life after his in an attempt to gain literary maturation. This fixation is important to note because the mistake made by Miu in thinking that Kerouac would be called a “Sputnik” because of the literary movement he is associated with instead of “Beatnik” shapes the orbit motif that Murakami makes use of to describe Sumire’s behavior throughout the rest of the work.

Because Sumire mentions multiple times that she has no sexual desire and is relatively withdrawn from some of the most sensation based aspects of life, it is natural that she would wish to engage in experience, whatever that may be, in order to find what she is lacking. I found the desire to gain feelings and sensation to be able to better write about the world very similar to the feelings Sal Paradise expresses. His constantly mobile behavior reflects an unwillingness to sit still and a need to experience the world first hand. Because writing and reading are activities that are commonly viewed as making one absent from the world, it makes sense that all of the characters who are so engrossed in them would be need to reestablish that connection.

K even tells his audience that Sumire was “too focused on becoming a novelist to really fall for anybody,” (8). This kind of restriction is not how literature comes about. In an interview, Murakami stated, “For me, writing is like breathing. I'm always writing something…if you stop entirely, it takes a long time to get your pace back.” This suggests that writing is something that needs to be done organically and with little break; yet most of the travelers that venture from page to page in our travel fictions separate themselves from their work in order to get a better understanding of what it is actually about or, in Sumire’s case, to try to find literary maturity. Interestingly, sometimes it is immaturity or appropriately impulsiveness of a business trip turned vacation to Greece that provides the ultimate experience that even Paradise would have approved of.  

Murakami, Haruki  Sputnik Sweetheart
Sean Wilsey Talks with Haruki Murakami

              Xiaolu Guo’s novel, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers spoke to me in many different languages and on many different levels. I currently co-teach a writing class for Asian immigrants at the Settlement House to help them achieve empowerment through writing. Each week they write short articles and essays, which sound eerily similar in their grammatical inaccuracy and sentiment to that of Xiaolu Guo’s twenty-three-year-old heroine Zhuang. Before I started working with these immigrants I never realized how much of an effect language can have on an individual; of course this was foolish of me; but because I always had a grip on the English language, I never considered what it would be like to not have one. Zhuang describes, “trying to express (me), but confusing---I see other little me try expressing me in other language” (33), as the struggle that comes with attempting to communicate one’s thoughts and emotions in a language and land that is foreign to her. Her struggle to grasp the language becomes intertwined with her attempts to become one with her lover and these simultaneous efforts demonstrate much of what a traveler encounters when she attempts to transforms into a local.

It seems that Zhuang’s relationship with her lover is deeply connected to that of her relationship to London and to her understanding of the English language. As one deepens, the others do as well. Being that language has much to do with place in that it is how people who reside there interact and express themselves, this parallel progression makes much sense. Guo describes this evolution using a beautiful comparison of Zhuang’s struggle to break down the walls that separate her from her Western lover while he maintains physical and emotional distance. Though she reads his diary entries and familiarizes herself with his past, there is something that she seems unable to obtain. One can understand her incessant effort to come closer and closer to him and finding it unreachable in the same manner in which her attempts to come closer and closer to fully understanding the English language are unattainable. She cannot breach a gap that is so apparent because each word he utters must be feverishly looked up in her concise Chinese-English dictionary, so her understanding of him and her understanding of English can never be organic or true to that of a native speaker.

Throughout the novel, Zhuang recounts several incidents of how her Chinese culture clashes with her Western love’s English one and how this cultural disparity causes even greater misunderstanding and disengagement in their communication. When she compares the Chinese view of family and lovers, she says, “That’s so different with my Chinese love—family means everything. Many people here have problems being intimate with each other. People keep distance because they want independence…maybe that’s why Westerner’s much more separated, lonely…” (87). That distance, which Zhuang associates completely with the West is what is separating her from feeling one with the culture and one with her lover. 

The course of the novel follows her inability to come to a full understanding, to form a full connection, which so many people, travelers and non-travelers alike, can understand. The significance of this occurring while Zhuang is in a foreign country is that it strengthens her sense of not belonging to another person and not belonging to another country. Her struggle to comprehend her relationship and to comprehend the English language echoes so many other struggles to lessen the space that people surround themselves with and to deal with the realization that some of that space is far too massive to lessen. It is to decrease the limit, as Zhuang puts it, “from your heart, from your lifestyle, which makes love feel like a friendship. You live inside of me, but I don’t live inside of you.” (153). 


Guo, Xiaolu A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers 

We are first introduced to the “Indian Surprise” in The Gateway of India, as Dwight’s attraction to the novelty of India that “fooled you, subverted you, then, if it did not succeed in destroying you with the unexpected, it left you so changed as to be unrecognizable,” (100). Just before Dwight becomes unrecognizable and completely detached from his American business life in the depths of Mahabaleshwar, he sees, out of the corner of his eye, two American girls and wonders, “what their Indian surprise might be,” (175). The story of those two American girls, Alice and Stella, in The Elephant God, has much to do with Dwight’s story and can help us examine how the characters in both novellas are altered completely, in both body and spirit by the force that is India.

Dwight’s “Indian Surprise” can be understood in terms of his levels of tourism, not the standard scale of consciousness though, rather a scale based upon the women that he encounters and how they represent different stages of his Indian transformation. The young dancer Sumitra, Dwight’s first sexual encounter, was the direct result of an Indian scheme, showing Dwight’s extreme naivety and ability to be taken advantage of as a foolish tourist. The trick had placed him in a position of power and while he was originally resistant, bestowed a feeling of heroism that led to an unleashing of his sexual impulsivity. This impulsivity led to a release of inhibitions that brought Dwight even deeper into the Indian depths and caused him to ask others for what he desired, which led of course to Indru. His sexual relations with her had an unraveling effect on what had protected him from mixing with the culture and he began to taste the Indian food, instead of chaining himself to his hotel room with canned nutrition.             

While his sexual encounter with Indru seemed to tear down much of what separated him from native life, this digression was momentarily halted or perhaps tested when he came in contact with the glamorous Winky. The scene in which, though Dwight is repulsed by Winky’s endless discourse his attraction for her beauty causes him to hastily kiss her, is the most telling of his departure from himself. Her reaction of disgust at his impetuousness grounds us and reminds us that sexual encounters do not exist as freely in reality as they do in Dwight’s new conception of it. This rejection is then counteracted by the introduction of Padmini, a younger version of Indru who Dwight learns to sexually explore, and subsequently results in the ultimate realization of his debauchery. The contrast between his original resistance to sexual explorations with Sumitra, the rejection he is confronted with from Winky and the horrifying reality of Indru and Padmini’s willingness to please him, represent the immense transformation Dwight undergoes that unexpectedly destroys him.

Interestingly, sexuality and the progression of American culture as opposed to its digression, is what transforms Alice’s life, and the exploration of both is the result of the same catalyst, Amitabh. She, like Dwight, came to India with a repression of sensual experience. Though she came willingly to India for leisure, while Dwight came for business obligations, she found herself at work and faced with a similarly severe, yet almost converse, fate. Though it would seem that working in a foreign land would separate Alice from being a tourist and immerse her in the culture, it actually had the reverse effect. The nature of the job, teaching Indians to speak “American English” for a telephone occupation, effectively takes away their native tongue and removes their natural way of speaking, which is one of the most important parts of their culture. 

When they become more successful in their American speech, their behavior is altered as well, and the traditional formality and respect that she associates with them is diminished. We see this most evidently in the transformation of Amitabh, who is responsible for Alice’s getting the job in the first place. Ironically, he is what brings her to alter the Indian’s speech and in turn alter their personalities. It is within this transformation that Amitabh becomes forceful and rude to Alice and ultimately sexually assaults her. While his assault breaks her spirit, it also releases her from her personal restraint and ultimately drives her determination for revenge and the pursuit of justice. It seems that Amitabh changes Alice, although she is the one who effectively changes him. Her power for transformation, in both herself and in others, is, in effect, her “Indian Surprise.” 

Theroux, Paul The Elephanta Suite 

For some, the attraction of travel has much to do with the desire to lose one’s self in the narrow winding streets of a foreign city. This desire for loss of familiarity is what drives people to the strange and, in McEwan’s novel, what draws them to the comfort of strangers.  Along the streets of what “may or may not be Venice,” Mary and Colin frequently find themselves both bound and at odds with the alikeness they have come to find with one another. This oneness is reflected in the display window of a shop where they both separately notice that, “the dummies were from the same mold,”(21) and in Caroline’s observations of the pair’s physical similarities being “both so finely built, almost like twins.” (66)

These apparent similarities come into play not only in their appearance but also in the recurrence of their sexual interactions, which McEwan’s narrator describes as having an “unhurried friendliness, the familiarity of its rituals and procedures, the secure, precision-fit of limbs and bodies, comfortable, like a cast returned to its mold,” (17). The fact that we are again brought back to the notion of the mold reminds the reader that Mary and Colin are aware of one another to such an extreme extent that there is little excitement or novelty in their exchanges. We can understand that this lack of exhilaration is perhaps what motivated them to travel in the first place and that their familiarity is “rather like too many suitcases…a matter of perpetual concern,” (13).

I think the comparison between their excessive closeness and too many suitcases makes a very telling point of their relationship and how it drives them to explore their desires for travel, and why it does not allow them to fully detach from their previous realities.  While they are in a sense escaping their home lives, they end up growing accustomed to a different type of normalcy abroad that functions in the same mundane way as one at home might. Prior to their trip, Colin was clearly separated from Mary and her children, but during their travels they were able to momentarily erase this division.

In a number of circumstances, especially after their visit to Caroline and Robert’s, they were successful in joining themselves fully and being able to rediscover a sense of passion. But there were also several instances, when their togetherness proved to frustrate the pair and when a familiarity with their hotel room and the unseen help of a maid caused them to grow lazy and dependent. It’s fascinating to consider the fact that growing too “comfortable” in any setting or with any individual can cause the same emotions as being at home.

The influence of home and its inescapability highlights the presence and prevalence of reality. That reality is woven throughout the novel through the postcards that Mary writes to her children on the first day of her trip, yet that remain without stamps until she departs. It’s interesting to consider the fact that she never mails them, yet she is reminded of her children several times throughout the journey and vocalizes a desire to reach out to them and sometimes even to have never left them in the first place. It is moments like this when McEwan forces the reader to question whether Mary really ever wanted to escape in the first place or if Colin had pushed the idea upon her.

McEwan also brings up another subject for examination in the work: the question whether it is ever possible to really escape one’s troubles or the weight of home. I believe that his connection of their closeness to the suitcases that often function as physical objects that drag the travelers down, makes the statement that the simple idea of them going away together prevents any possibility for them to really escape. McEwan makes this point with his discussion that “alone, perhaps, they each could have explored the city with pleasure,” (13) but together it was difficult for them to fully rid themselves of familiarity. 

McEwan, Ian, the comfort of strangers

In Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, the travel narrative revolves around the thematic use of clarity to describe Aschenbach’s motivation for his journey and the subsequent uncertainty that goes along with it. This central focus on lucidity has much to do with Mann’s concentration on aesthetics, as noted by Gary Johnson in “Death in Venice and the aesthetic correlative” because the two encompass his stress on appearance and sensation. The novella is filled with delicate visual descriptions of both the characters and the weather, which draws attention to the idea of vividness in the work. It’s important to note this focus because it has much to do with the style in which Mann wrote it and in what he is trying to stress throughout the journey about old age and subsequent death.

When we first encounter Aschenbach, he is just beginning his travels to Venice and even within the first few pages, we start to feel overtones of mystery and the unknown. These overtones are engendered by heavy descriptions of tombstones and spiritual morbidity, both of which contribute ironically to a lack of clarity. Mann seesaws between this sense of vagueness and what is contrastingly abundantly clear. Aschenbach’s intentions for traveling remain a mystery in that he is described as being “quite content with the view of the earth’s surface that anyone can gain without stirring far from home,” (7) yet he feels a persistent “urge to flee.” (8). This urge to flee is discussed in an abstract sense, which is very different from the descriptive explanations of the more visual components of the novel. It is also a concept that has been reflected within a great many travel works, that there is a pull, whether internally or externally, for the individual to abandon his home and journey outwards.   

This journey for Aschenbach is to come closer to both experiencing and acceptance of death. Because death is such a deeply complex idea (or reality, if you will), it is quite fitting that Mann uses the diving in and out of specificity to discuss it. The clearer aspects of the novel that evoke visual stimulation lie in the intensive character sketching and descriptions.  Mann’s portrait of Tadzio, the fourteen-year-old boy with whom Aschenbach becomes infatuated, erupts with colors and visual specifications that make him leap from the page. The novel is filled with these moments of intense description of both the characters and the scenery, which add to grounding the reader in understanding Aschenbach’s travels, while providing an aspect of authenticity or realness to the landscape.

When thinking in terms of landscape, the weather is one of the finest examples of how Mann deals with complex components of both life in the real and visual world and death in the abstract sense. He does so using descriptive intricacies along with heavy symbolism to tie the aspect of Aschenbach’s inner search for death and his external exploration of the foreign outside world that he deprived himself of for a great deal of his life.

There are several instances when Aschenbach reflects on the weather and the uneasiness and lack of clarity he feels because of it. He associates Venice with having caused him this type of discomfort, yet in his impulsive desire for travel that is the precise destination, which he has sought. This heavy focus on what is clouded both in a visual sense of the sky and internally for his understanding of death, speaks of his desire and hope that “surely it would clear over Venice,” (31). 






Mann, Thomas Death in Venice 
Death in Venice and the aesthetic correlative
Death in Venice: Overview

Geography concerns the study of the earth, its features, and its distribution of life, thus also including the distribution’s effects on human activity. As Tuan explains in “Place: An Experiential Perspective,” the examination of human activity and place are centered on the fundamental concept of the home as a universal point of reference. This point of reference shapes the way every person sees the world because it acts as a comparison, in both a physical and spiritual sense, for the way they will interact with others and for the feelings they will experience within foreign surroundings. Tuan also notes that it is the objects and elements that exist within the home, not just the people who can be found there, that strengthen this sensation. It is through “the passive modes of experience” that people find themselves deeply connected to these objects, specifically to the rooms and the furnishings of their homes, because each has a physical presence that allows a relationship to be formed with it, one that provides a center or “loci of meaning.”

The importance of physicality is essential in understanding how travelers interact with their world and in turn how they interact with themselves. Whether their journeys span across a country or the distance of the globe; every traveler, those in the desert, on the road and on the sidewalks of France, must find themselves at some point retiring to a room. These rooms are often the only tangible elements that the travelers encounter for long spans of time, and it is within their tangibility that the travelers are able to clearly see themselves. When one is in a constant state of motion, it is easy to get lost within the scenery and ever-changing backdrop of the road, the dusty street corner or the sandy terrain; but in a room surrounded by four solid walls, one has nothing but himself and a few furnishings to frame that image around. It is imperative that that image of self is always present, and for the traveler, that that presence comes from his finding it within himself, of course, in conjunction with a few dry walls.

While in a home each room is different, not only in the fact that it serves a different purpose, but also in that it contains personal objects that hold significance; in a hotel there is a certain sense of uniformity. This uniformity is what ties all hotel rooms together; it is their standard nature and lack of connectedness with their occupants that brings forth a sense of personal reflection that can only be experienced when one is distanced from home. This distance, accompanied by the pseudo-home veneer that hotels are constructed of, combine to provide the traveler with the impression that he is in a home-like state where he must fill in the blanks or empty space with introspection and personal thought.

These periods of self-examination, taking place in hotel rooms across the globe, are all uniform in that they help the lodger understand something about himself by either presenting his interior clearly or revealing a clouded core. For Port in the opening lines of Paul Bowles’, The Sheltering Sky, the room is a place that “meant very little to him,” yet it is where he constantly oscillates between a sense of being and a dreamlike state of nothingness (Bowles 3). Port is able to navigate between these two levels of consciousness by his awareness of the bare room and what is around him. Though Port explains nothing of what exists geographically beyond the room, its existence and the feeling that it has given him is enough to justify existence of life outside of it. 

The fact that a room that has no relation to Port nor contains any substantial furnishing is able to provide such a profound effect is very telling of the capabilities a place has to impact an individual. Port experiences this place by being grounded by it; though he finds no personal connection with it or with its furnishings as one might have within the home, he uses its physical existence to transcend back into reality and to validate the outside world in the same sense as the interior complexities of his mind. While this internal-external oscillation occurs within Port’s mind, the concept of the room aiding this separation can be seen similarly in the detachment of an individual from other elements of life as well. 

Hemingway’s Jake in The Sun Also Rises finds this distinction within his own room, not through the departure of an internal conversation, but instead from a physical estrangement from society. Jake frequently attempts to escape to the safety of four confined walls when he is overwhelmed by the reality of his physical deformity and his discontentment with Brett. He sees the room as the only material distance he can gain from the world; but paradoxically, it is the furnishings he encounters within his temporary home that cause him to become even more aware of the outside world and subsequently more aware of himself: “Undressing, I looked at myself in the mirror of the big armoire beside the bed. That was a typically French way to furnish a room. Practical, too, I suppose. Of all the ways to be wounded…” (Hemingway 38).

The mirror is a fascinating object to consider within a room because regardless of the duration an individual spends in it, he has a direct connection with the room; that connection being his seeing his own reflection within it. As Jake stares at his naked body in the French mirror, he is reminded once again of his disfiguration and is forced to face both literally and intellectually the reality of his pained life. It is interesting to note that Jake is conscious of the geographic loci in which he finds himself: a French bedroom. This is an important piece of information because if he were in any other country in another any other room, it is quite possible that the mirror might be placed differently or that it might not be present at all. But because Jake is in this place he finds himself confronted by an element of his being that he wished to conceal from both the world and from himself. The desire to conceal one’s identity can have the effect of temporarily losing one’s self within the safety that is inherent in a confined structure.

When Sal, Kerouac’s fictionalized persona in On the Road, spends the day sleeping in a gloomy inn, he experiences this sensation of losing one’s self. “I didn’t know who I was—I was far from home…in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen…I was somebody else, some stranger.” As Sal attempts to escape the responsibility of his white middle class reality, he finds that, at least briefly, he is able to do so within a strange Des Moines hotel room. There is something about that room that allows him to suspend himself from the reality that he is paradoxically in search of. Though he experiences a transitory separation from himself, after that momentary separation has passed, Sal recognizes his location as being “halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future,” (Kerouac 15). This statement displays the sense of awareness Sal is able to obtain through his experience of the hotel room even within an apparent loss of self. It is in this geographic connectedness that the importance of Sal’s physical location is realized. His awareness and deep connection to place in terms of that hotel room reflect the sort of realization he has come to within himself.  

Though people are shaped by what they are surrounded by; people, in fact, have a great deal to do with the shaping of those surroundings themselves. A true understanding of one’s self can only be obtained in an environment that fosters personal thought and provokes meaning; but, it is within the individual himself to experience that environment or to create its meaning. For travelers it is often difficult to take the time to experience this reflection or to step back from the experience that they are so much a part of. Fortunately, they are able to experience a sense of themselves while removing their clothing and opening and closing their eyes in rooms across the globe. These rooms assist the travelers gaining of personal understanding and meaning by allowing them to see a reflection, both literally and metaphorically, of themselves. Rooms also become centers of meaning in that their physical presence allows their inhabitants to feel a concrete sense of place and grounding. This grounding mimics a sense of home that is extremely important to travelers who are presumably apart from their point of reference because it provides a personal geography within the desert, the sidewalk and the road that fosters self-awareness within four sturdy walls.   


Sources:

Bowles, Paul The Sheltering Sky
Hemingway, Ernest The Sun Also Rises
Kerouac, Jack On The Road
Tuan, Yi-Fu.  "Place: An Experiential Perspective"
Free Dictionary. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/geography

            A place, as described by D. C. D. Pocock in “Place and the novelist” is, “at its most obvious and familiar… where things ‘fall into place’.” For Sal, as he is traveling up and down the coasts of America, there is more than one place where things feel like, at least for a fleeting moment, they have come together; but it is within a beaten down movie theatre in Skid Row Detroit where the nothingness that he had been in search of in every one of his nationwide excursions took form. Though Yi-Fu Tuan argued in “Place: An Experiential Perspective” that in order to know a place one must experiences it through sensory modes such as taste, smell, and touch; Sal demonstrates that there are other means of establishing a connection that is just as strong.

Throughout his cross-country journey Sal is attracted to the bums he sees hitching rides on the road because they represent all that he is in search of. They are free of the responsibility of the working class, free of obligations and free of societal expectations that he finds so confining. It is their lack of rooting and sense of belonging to a “home” that he is so envious of. Ironically, this sense of “home” that Sal wishes so strongly to detach himself from is romanticized in both Pocock’s and Tuan’s essay. Pocock remarks that our home determines “the way we perceive the world,” and Tuan believes it is “a place of comfort”, a place we can always return to. In a novel driven both metaphorically and literally in search of finding IT in any direction but that of home, it is interesting to consider that some believe that home is the only true place where IT can be realized. 

The Skid Row movie theater provides some sense of realization for Sal in that it is there where he is able to recognize that he has become one with the scum and bums of the world that he so much admired. He is surrounded on all sides by “beat negroes” and those who had “reached the end of the road” and sees, perhaps for the first time, that by aligning himself with them, he has reached the end of the road as well. He identifies with a dusty pile of scum that the movie theater attendants are sweeping off of the floors and realizes that he could have been swept away just as easily. It is in this place, a theatre where people come to step outside of their lives and experience something foreign, that Sal is able to see his reality, his self and his life clearly. It is fitting that the setting for this realization is a beaten down theater because, through the course of his journey, Sal has become relatively beaten down as well.

The strength of a place comes from its ability to provide some sort of self- reflection, comes from Pocock’s claim of a place’s “ambience and mood.” Sal is able to experience that self-reflection and be tuned into the ambience of Skid Row because of the people he sees there; “if you sifted all Detroit in a wire basket the beater solid core of dregs couldn’t be better gathered.” These people provide the human connection that Tuan believes is the most important element of the place, the knowing it in terms of knowing others. This allows Sal to feel it and by feeling it he is able to gain something from it. He draws a connection with the theater because it is the embodiment of a place filled with fantasized ideals, and the all-night shows, a mirrored reflection of the disappointment that comes from realizing that the screen isn’t real. 


Kerouac, Jack On the Road (Pgs. 246-247) 
Tuan, Yi-Fu.  "Place: An Experiential Perspective"
Pocock, D. C. D.  "Place and the Novelist"

“You boys going to get somewhere or just going?” (20), though Sal offers no conclusive response to this, he does note, “it was a damned good question,” and he is quite right. He had taken off to Denver, to San Fran, Chicago and Mexico City with no clear purpose or plan, so was there a destination in sight or was he just going?

I’m fairly certain that there was a little bit of both, a pseudo-destination that ended paradoxically and an internally motivated desire to just go. People are constantly focusing so much of their energy on purpose; on planning and organizing every detail of their lives to such an extent that it is no wonder that the underlying desire to flee exists. It comes from the dissatisfaction with the mundane, the disheartening reality of life after a certain age, and the innate desire to move forward. Sal has just split from his wife when we meet him; and, in what seems like moments later, he has gotten “the bug like Dean.” He has been bitten by the longing for motion, for the pursuit of greener pastures and the uncovering of hidden truths that we somehow associate with unknown territory. He is in search of the “word” that he is quite sure will be spoken to him at any given moment from the native folk he finds in each new land.

His desire to travel is associated with the excitement and comfort he finds from meeting new people and feeling a sense of companionship and remembrance of old friends in doing so. It’s ironic at best that his motivation for wanting to move forward is tied together with the accompaniment of the familiar. It is as though he is in pursuit of exploration, but at the same time he is not willing to discard the standard ideals of his identity. We see this occurring in several instances when Sal sends a post to his aunt asking for money, when he is “rudely jolted in the bus station…. into the memory of the fact that he was three thousand two hundred miles from his aunt’s house,” (60) and when he questions “Gad…Why hadhe come here?” (75).

The paradox exists in the fact that in all the places he travels, he is always searching for more, “itching” for the next journey and feeling as though things are “falling apart” whenever he starts to feel some sort of stability. He remarks that “the time was coming for him to leave Frisco or he’d go crazy,” (73) and he says this because he is starting to become comfortable, because his experiences are beginning to assert pressure upon the surface that he has constructed to represent what can and cannot be breached. While Sal claims to be striving for the experience, he flees from him it, “he runs from the intimacy and responsibility of more demanding human relationships,” he places“emphasis on spontaneity and instinct” he is “afraid of feeling on any other than the impassive and ultimately impersonal “wow” level.” Because he is either unwilling or unable to pass through that state of being, because it’s the constant nut-crazed notion of discovery and childlike sense of exploration that is what manages to provide him any sense of satisfaction.

Ironically this is what perhaps was the most offensive to critics such as Podhoretz because there were, “no restrictions of his creative “child,” because rather it is the innate childlike desires that Sal had repressed, like unruly sexual experience and fistfuls of freshly dispensed ice cream, that caused him to feel the most intensely.  It is clear that whether Sal and the gang actually get somewhere or if they are just going, there is something that cannot be obtained in the same sense that there is a feeling they cannot attain. Paradoxically, Sal is cognizant of this fact early in his journeys when he says, “That last thing is what you can’t get…Nobody can get to that last thing. We keep on living in hopes of catching it once for all.” (48).  It’s as though he knows he can never successfully scratch his itch, satisfy his yearning for motion or catch what he is looking for; but that won’t stop him from trying. 


Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road': A Re-Evaluation
Overview of "On the Road"
(Photograph taken by myself. Accord, New York) 

The motivation of the traveler meditates between pleasure-seeking recreation and an exploration of personal identity. While leisure is most commonly associated with European adventures, analogous to the Italian and Spanish voyages Kit frequently remarks she would rather have gone on, that interpretation is not exclusive. Leisure encompasses a variety of definitions, including what Cohen references, “as a mechanism which recharges the batteries of weary modern man, refreshes and restitutes him so he is able again to return to the wear and tear of ‘serious’ living.” While the conventional archetype for such behavior exists in swanky cafés, it is not confined to them. If leisure, as Cohen makes the claim, can also be the simple period of relaxation and refreshment many individuals indulge in, that indulgence can occur, not solely in posh Europe, but also in the depths of the Sahara.

Prior to Port’s onset illness, Kit finds herself unintentionally traveling about in preciously this pleasure-seeking manner. She habitually confines herself to her bedroom, as filthy and unglamorous, as it may be, engaging in this semi-conscious relaxation. While we understand that her hermitage is a necessary psychological seclusion to consider her blunders and presumably seek escape from them, on the surface it appears that she is experiencing the recreational mode of travel. She is fulfilling this mold by essentially “getting away,” because it is clear that there are things she is attempting to ‘get away from’; if this were not the case, than she “may find no need for travel,” than she presumably, “would have stayed home.” 

The interesting element that Port throws into the mix is that he, like Boorstin, possesses a “they-are-the-tourists-I-am-not” attitude. Though he travels with a great deal of luggage, was at one point attached to his passport, and continually rejects the native propositions for tea, he still carries an air of superiority over his companions; asserting that he is in search of anything but the “trivial, superficial, frivolous pursuit” of the tourist. Kit on the other hand, was never concerned with such designations, but following Port’s death, found herself in a deviation even further from anything Port was ever able to attain.

In this sense, through her transformation she embodied the experimental mode of tourism, engaging “in a quest for an alternative” lifestyle that began after her submergence from African waters and resurfacing, free of societal constraints and conceptualized time.  Cohen summarizes the process that Kit underwent by comparing it to that of the assumed modern man, stating that, “the individual would become ‘deviant’…or seen as ‘retreating’, opting-out, or escaping the duties imposed upon him by his society.” These can be reflected through Kit’s shedding of Western dress, disengagement of time, and liberation from conventional society. In her sought out search for pure identity, both internally and externally she plunged further into the touristic experience and entered into the existential mode.

From the opening pages of The Sheltering Sky, it is evident that the existential mode has always been prevalent. While this mode of examination is the only accurate method of reflecting on the novel as a whole, each mode of travel is important and quite essential to our understanding of it. Port ended and began by meditation through the subconscious; his refusal, even in his final moments to, “fully…commit himself to,” to either medium, and in essence, to either location, demonstrates this sort of existential existence. Similarly Kit embodied this concept towards the end of the novel when she submersed herself in native life and allowed “the search itself” to “become a way of life.” Both she and Port existed in “tourist space” and acted in obscure manners while being unaware of their “craving for authenticity”. This craving, and the actions that followed it, provide the justification for their “touristic condition” and reflects their “absurd human condition.” This novel is truly about the human condition; it is an exploration not only through the Sahara, but also through the mind, in actuality, through many minds. And by examining it in this fashion, we are able to take away some sort of understanding of that subconscious psychological journey.  

Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
Erik Cohen’s “A Phenomenology of Tourist Experiences 

Human beings possess a certain desire, it being either a conscious one or one that is buried neatly under surface of their constantly active minds, to make connections. These desires are what cause some people to marry and others to settle permanently in one place, detaching themselves from the nomadic lifestyle that once dominated early civilization. For our travelers who consider themselves as being such because they don’t hurry “back home at the end of a few weeks or months,” and instead belong “no more to one place than to the next,” the thirst for that connection is what leads them along through their North African journey. (6)

While Kit and Port are supposedly bound in holy matrimony, a great disconnect exists between them, making the conventional notion of their marriage deeply superficial.  Perhaps it is the artificial nature of this relationship that drives them along the sand coated hills of Africa, hoping to grasp some sense of comfort that they lack greatly from their absence of home and disengagement with one another. As they travel deeper into the Sahara, it is evident, at least to Port, that within a “distant and unconnected part of the world, the longing for closer ties with” Kit “was proving stronger than the fear” that seemed to have prevented their closeness from the beginning. (99)

The reality that Port becomes conscious of as he gazes out of his windshield to view the flat African road ahead of him, is one of the most common preconceived notions of travel: that the constant motion of things and the suspension of time will provide a sense or discovery of meaning in one’s life. Port notes that when “en route from one place to another,” he is able to “look at his life with a little more objectivity than usual.” (98). While this may be true, he is only able to observe that clearness as he plunges deeper into a state of movement, making the possibility for him to be a participant in it unfeasible. Kit finds a similar sense of clarity when she becomes disconnected from herself in the fourth class car of the train; yet she is consciously aware that it is “always a pendulum; in another hour she would be back where she had been a minute ago.” (72)

Our travelers wish to escape themselves and in this sense they also wish to avoid the constraints of time; Port, making note of this when justifying himself as a traveler, just as Kit does when she is suspended in an alternate intoxicated state in the train corridor. Bowles’ technique of connecting these two desires, elevated consciousness and a disengagement of time, is by “the use of the dream” that permits him “to intensify and expand a moment which is otherwise consciousless.” The fact that Bowles began the work with Port awakening from a dream shows us that there is significance to the state of consciousness one can transcend throughout the novel and parallels that with what can be gained from travel. Similarly, Kit frequently escapes the realities that she does not wish to encounter by means of sleep and often disregards the reality of place, sometimes even that of a bedbug infested African hotel, by doing so.

The actions of the alleged couple follow closely with their need for escape and dissatisfaction with the world around them, which motivates travel. That world which has been strung apart by war is now cluttered and seems to provide for them precisely what it did for the three women who wished to have tea in the Sahara, glasses full of sand.  

'Tea in the Sahara': The Function of Time in the Work of Paul Bowles
Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky 

Do you hear that woman in the open railway-carriage next to you? She’s weeping and her two children clothed in black are seated beside her with matching cloud puff eyes. They went to be with the body, the one that was trampled among a frenzied crowd intoxicated by the rich, colorful sensation of the authentic Spanish fiesta. That body was their father, a man who had experienced the fiesta each year; but in Pamplona a few days earlier, a bull named Bocanegra experienced him. “You hear? Mutero. Dead. He’s Dead. With a horn through him. All for morning fun. Es muy flamenco.”  (202).  A twenty-eight year old man with a farm, a wife, and two children is dead, all for fun, all for an experience, all for an attempted escape of reality and an expectant search for authenticity.

How far are we really willing to go for that authenticity?  How much do we need to lose to prove to ourselves that something has been gained? Jake tells us that “going to another country doesn’t make any difference.” that, “You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.” (19). He says this because he’s “tried all that;” because his reality of implied castration is a devastating one at best; one that a South American excursion with the self-absorbed Robert Cohn, simply cannot ameliorate. While Jake is aware that moving about cannot aid him, he continues to live in that fashion. He travels and is drawn with a hunger to the bullfights, absorbing himself with aficion as an almost “displaced concern for authenticity.”

His concerns are driven by his innate desire to feel, to satisfy an unquenchable thirst for Brett and the natural world.  Ironically, this deeply rooted yearning to connect has led him to “lose touch with the soil.” (120). It has transformed him into an expatriate who lives completely in a transitory space. While he is still considered by Montoya as an American, his attempts to integrate into European culture have pushed him even farther into a transient semi European universe. But we are reminded when the group sees a banner that reads, “Hurray for the Foreigners!” and Robert Cohn looks dumbfounded into a crowd of vibrantly colored dancers asking, “Where are the foreigners?” that regardless of trained tongues, leather wine bottles and garlic lined necks, they are in fact foreigners after all (120).  

If we were to examine each one of our travelers, we can see that they are all tourists for different reasons, that the attraction of going away or taking a holiday provides the same appeal of escape for each of their different ailments. For Jake and Brett the frustration of not being able to consummate their passion causes them to seek escape. Their means of doing so is riding around in taxicabs where they can view the outside world and believe with a false sense of hope that they can be together. While Jake’s final line, “Isn’t it pretty to think so,” is speaking directly to that hope of togetherness, it is also embodying the reason why they stare out of those car windows: to feel the potential enjoyment of café select or the delicacy of sherry before taking a sip. It is to imagine the damn good life they could have had, because once they take a step out into the sunlight, or plant their feet firmly in the ground and cease their travels, the world which they wished to escape will become real. 

llyson Nadia Field. The Hemingway Review.
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises 

Society is a social group defined as having a distinctive cultural and economic organization. While the traditional concept of society is associated with the differences between social groups, that same definition can be applied to a social atmosphere that varies depending on location. Though Miss Daisy Miller claims that she is “very fond of society”[1] she is accustomed to that of New York State where dinner parties are frequent and gentlemen companions are as common and accepted as carriage rides with lady friends. Because this is Daisy’s conception of cultural reality, she does not recognize the societal elements in the small town of Vevey, which leads her to the quick assertion that, “There isn’t any society; or if there is, I don’t know where it keeps itself. Do you?”[2]

After spotting Daisy’s poised frame on the arms of multiple male suitors, listening to the hushed gossip of hotel maids, and witnessing Mrs. Walker’s condemnation of the elegant creature at a small evening affair, I can say that I have found it. Europe’s society is buttoned within women’s modest attire and hidden behind their draped carriages; it is what causes the town to whisper when Daisy is seen on evening strolls and what prevents Mrs. Costello from making Daisy’s acquaintance. It is not merely a sense, but an understanding of restraint. It is a society that locks itself away and speaks in manners of eloquence in order to conceal any immodest motives, though I’m not certain any underlying ones actually do exist. For Daisy, this is not society, but that is simply because her concept of society is confined to what she is surrounded with in New York State and Schenectady. Interestingly enough she fits into several of the molds that are defined for this society, which is perhaps why she is initially able to exist in it. Her dress is the image of perfection and her speech is always in the upmost fashion of formality, but her tongue is not restrained. While she is formal, she is also gregarious and her mannerisms, while charming are often taken to be provocative or obscure.

Being that I am myself deeply immersed in American culture, I found these reactions to Daisy’s innocent behavior quite fascinating. While I did not initially find her actions to be impolite or improper, “set against the quiet formality and restraint of the Europeans” it was clear that they were as so. This realization lead me to an even greater understanding of the disparity of these two societies and the idea that the principle conflict in the work is not that of Daisy and Winterbourne but “between Geneva and Schenectady”. It is a complete “collision between the artificial and the natural, the restrained and the free.” Thinking about the primary chapter of the work set within “a particularly comfortable hotel”[3], we begin with the initial understanding that the individuals we will encounter are both, for better or for worse, tourists.  While Winterbourne has adapted his manners a great deal, Daisy is still her free spirited self. She is an image of American culture traveling by car to a series of places that are not familiar with those freedoms and her refusal to conform to their standards causes her to continuously turn heads. Her story is one of the disparities of place and the cultural differences that natives in both countries take for granted. Daisy does not alter her behavior for the same reason that the Europeans are quick to classify her, because both are looking through their own culturally distinct lens.  

I leaned back into the worn navy blue cushion of the ItaliaRail and sighed. The back of my eyelids never looked so exotic. They were dark; not unlike the dusty insides of Milan’s Cathedral, but they were real: unmanufactured facets of flesh that were untouched by the prongs of modern construction men who tampered with ancient carvings for only a few Euros and some dry bread. It’s not their fault really; under those faded yellow caps one cannot be blamed for seeing only the crumbling edges of stone and being reminded by each peak of sunlight strained through stained glass, that silver coins come at dawn.

I suppose the idea, that their renovation or recreation, if I’m calling it what it really is, may feel a bit in-genuine, to a man who has spent his last year’s pay check on a plane ticket and accompanying fares to see a land that as a boy he could only reach in fantasy, would never have occurred to them. It wasn’t stapled to their working papers with mud smears, nor was it plastered atop the gift shop that footed an overwhelming majority of their salaries, so why would they take notice. The look of utter disappointment washed over the creases of my damp forehead must have gotten lost in translation, mistaken just as my words had been, for an American expression and exclamation of awe.  This misinterpretation must have acted as reinforcement for those men in that they actually believed that the heavy arms that were bursting from their cotton sleeves were helping to create a work of beauty.   

I’m rather sure they never realized that that each clockwork motion made towards their conception of manmade splendor actually resulted in a crane-like destruction of the actual beauty that had once existed. They were the stage crew, without being conscious of it, they sculpted the set and dug into the plastered scenery just before pulling back the rouged curtains and claiming to an audience of Americans dripping in hip sacks and guide books, that this was “The Real Italia”. Of course, it wasn’t, and I can’t imagine that I was the only one standing in the crowd of that reconstructed church who could see that. But now I noticed as I looked from car to car, that I seemed to the be the only one on this train who no longer bore eyes glazed with excitement, anxiously glued to the passing pastures with hopes of what was waiting at the next stop. Instead I had sealed lids that looked deep into the only arena I knew to be authentic. The Italia I was in search of had been there all along, pealed behind emerald eyes that had been forced to observe an artificial one. Now I was headed towards my own inauthentic world, sculpted by the fabrications that I had been trying to escape and hopeful that a natural world would await me. Unfortunately 1200 Euros and a rail pass can’t erase my past, nor can it lead me to an un-tampered one.