Don't Make Me Pull Over by Richard Ratay

Source of book: Borrowed from my brother.

There was definitely a golden age for American road trips - that magical period between the road building of the postwar period, and the advent of affordable air travel. It was during this time that the Interstate Highway system was built (despite massive cost overruns), kitschy roadside motels and tourist traps popped up, and the station wagon reigned as the family car. This book combines personal anecdote and history to tell a story of this era.

My own childhood was filled with road trips, and, like the author, I have some really great memories as a result. Technically, I was born a bit late for the heyday of the American road trip. But, a few factors combined to make our family a bit of an outlier. First, we were never all that rich. This meant that air travel was out of the question except for the occasional funeral or work-related thing for my dad, at least until my late teens. (I was nearly 17 the first time our family all boarded a commercial airplane together.) Second, my dad always loved road trips. He loved driving, and the fun of planning a route, and the thrill of discovering things along the way. I inherited all of these traits.

Some of my earliest vacation memories are of us packing up in the early morning and driving from Los Angeles to Oakland, where my maternal grandparents lived. This was, for a number of years, our most common trip. But there were others. I remember driving to Lake Shasta for a week of houseboating. Or the first time we visited the Grand Canyon. Or those two extended family reunions in Montana - those may still be the longest road trips I have taken. Whatever the case, I remember sitting in between my parents in the front seat, with map in hand. (I have always been good with maps - and navigation. I can still draw the Los Angeles freeway system from memory, and could probably list the major streets for the San Fernando Valley where I grew up.) I remember seedy hotels. And much nicer ones. I ate at more Denny’s then I can count - there weren’t a lot of other options in most towns other than fast food. I know what Las Vegas feels like when it is 117 degrees. I still have postcards from around the western US. And I have a lot of good memories.

It turns out that I am raising my kids the same way. We have done a number of epic road trips as a family. In addition, however, the kids and I have made camping road trips a regular thing for the last five years. Amanda isn’t a camper, and isn’t as much into the various national parks as I am, but she doesn’t mind us going out and seeing the wilderness without her. Regular readers of the blog will notice that we listen to a lot of audiobooks. Early in my towing experience, we discovered that while music is good, audiobooks are even better at keeping me focused and reducing the fatigue of driving. Also, it keeps the kids entertained. To be fair, this is one way we have broken with the tradition of using games and such to occupy kids in the car (although Amanda will bring along Mad Libs when she joins us.)

With this background in mind, I found this book to be a fun read. Ratay was the youngest in a family of six, so he had kind of a unique take on the experience. The book tells a lot of his own story, but it also has plenty of actual history and interesting relevant facts. These range from a discussion of the Interstate system and how it was built, Howard Johnson and chain restaurants (before Denny’s, even!), Holiday Inn and Ramada and their rivalry, car safety, speed traps, tourist traps, and more. By the mid to late 1980s, when we took most of our trips, much of the iconic kitsch of, say, Route 66 was already on the decline and fading from view - although seeing it last year was kind of sad - so much has closed or crumbled to dust even since I was a kid. We were clearly past the prime of road tripping even then, and my kids probably will grow up knowing our family was a bit weird. I hope they at least have some fun memories of our travels.

Anyone who has spent a lot of time in a car with family should appreciate this book. It is a quick, light read, but it does have interesting history and amusing personal stories. It is worth picking up at the library, if you can find it.

Three Men In A Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome

Source of book: I own this, but we listened to the audiobook read by the late Frederick Davidson

It is always an exciting moment when you can introduce your children to a beloved classic. I discovered Three Men In A Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) rather late in life, about 10 or so years ago, and knew that some day, it would be appreciated by my kids.

Three Men In A Boat was originally conceived as a serious travelogue giving the reader useful tips for planning a boat trip up the Thames from Kingston to Oxford. Thus, the book contains interesting historical notes on the various towns, and Magna Carta Island (allegedly where King John signed the document) among other features. However, as the book was being written, Jerome seems to have realized that it was the humorous stories about trips taken by himself and his friends that were the best part of the book. Thus, these were expanded, and became the best part of the work. 

Magna Carta Island. Believe it or not, it was up for sale a couple of years ago.

At the outset, the author takes great pains to stress the absolute veracity of what he writes. Obviously, this isn’t entirely true, but there is a certain earthiness that reveals Jerome’s personal experiences at the heart of the tale. His companions represent real people. “George” was George Wingrave, who later became a senior manager of Barclay’s Bank. (Jerome describes George’s job as taking naps at the bank.) “Harris” was Carl Hentschel, who founded a printing business. And “J,” naturally, was Jerome himself. Montmorency, the dog, was the truly fictional character, although the author believed that there was a bit of the canine in all Englishmen.

From the very start of the book, the author makes it clear that he will be pretending to be objective while skewering his companions and himself mercilessly. The three are sitting around in a general malaise, discussing what is wrong with them. J is certain - having read a medical dictionary cover to cover - that the only known disease he lacks is “housemaid’s knee.” His doctor doesn’t agree, however, and recommends nutritious food and a pint of beer each evening. So, they eventually agree that it is all due to overwork, and decide on a two week vacation. After rejecting several options, including a sea voyage (Jerome’s descriptions of seasickness are hilarious), then decide to take a camping skiff up the Thames.

Interspersed with the details of the trip are a variety of anecdotes and digressions. Some, such as the sad tale of a single mother who committed suicide, read like Victorian purple prose, but others seem there solely for entertainment. The kids particularly liked the story of Uncle Podger and the chaos he caused in the hanging of a picture. Other bits include some stock jokes like the plaster trout and banjo jokes.

Probably the most popular bit was the description of the Irish Stew, which the boaters make using leftovers. My older four kids can cook in varying degrees - the oldest two can do everything themselves - so they listened to the ingredient list carefully. Leftover beef and lamb pies? Good. Various vegetables, even better. But when the leftover smoked salmon was added, there were some titters. This particular addition was, shall we say, not universally approved. But then, this followed:

I forget the other ingredients, but I know nothing was wasted; and I remember that, towards the end, Montmorency, who had evinced great interest in the proceedings throughout, strolled away with an earnest and thoughtful air, reappearing, a few minutes afterwards, with a dead water-rat in his mouth, which he evidently wished to present as his contribution to the dinner; whether in a sarcastic spirit, or with a genuine desire to assist, I cannot say.

To the extent one can roll on the floor while seatbelted in, we did so.

Three Men In A Boat was not greeted with universal applause. The critics were mostly hostile, railing against the book for its “vulgar” use of slang, among other faults. As has been the habit of critics from time immemorial, they castigated the author for appealing to the tastes of the lower classes. The book sold, however, and sold well. Since its appearance in 1889, it has never been out of print.

For those who like to live their books, this one is a real gem. One can easily recreate the trip. In fact, the travelogue portion has stood up extremely well, as the inns and pubs named in the book are still open for business 125 years later. Hooray for British resistance to change, or something like that. For what it’s worth, the only bit of this book that I have personally experienced was a half hour of punting at Oxford back in my law school days. This does seem like the sort of thing I would have done, in another place and time. Should one wish to recreate this trip, you can indeed rent camping skiffs. Many date back to Jerome’s days. A truly authentic experience, at least if you can bring your own fox terrier. 

One caution about this book would be that it does reflect certain Victorian attitudes, such as a degree of condescension toward women - something not lost on my older daughters, who were eager to point out that they would have been perfectly competent to row or tow a skiff. I have no doubt that they are right. But these are ultimately a minor fault, and one common to much of the history of literature, alas. It made for a good discussion, however, of just how much things have changed. (This was aided by the true stories we learned during our exploration of California’s Gold Country on this trip.)

I can recommend this book as a classic of British Victorian humor, and one that children can enjoy as well. There are a number of well-regarded audiobooks of this work, including one by Hugh Laurie. Frederick Davidson did a fine job on this one, enhancing the experience.

Northward to the Moon by Polly Horvath

Source of book: Audiobook borrowed from the library

I’m going to start right off with the bad news. This book was, unfortunately, the most disappointing book I have read in a long time. We enjoyed two other Polly Horvath books this year, Mr. and Mrs. Bunny, Detectives Extraordinaire, and Everything on a Waffle. So, it seemed natural to expect that this book would hold the same wry humor and gentle satire of the others. Thus, it was disappointing that this one was unrelentingly dreary, in the “realistic” style often common in more adult oriented serious fiction. Horvath’s other books certainly had a degree of realism, and even unattractive characters, and so on, but there was always two things: a ray of light in the form of one or more likeable characters, and some comic relief to keep the weight of the world from being felt too heavily.

Apparently, this is the second book in a series, which might explain why the author expected the characters to already be somewhat familiar. It wasn’t hard to pick things up where they were, but I do wonder if I might have become more attached to the narrator/protagonist if I had met her in the earlier book.

Jane is the oldest of four children, who all have paternity which is doubtful (although one presumes the mother knows, but isn’t telling.) The man in their lives is Ned, who mom recently married. He is a bit of a ne’re-do-well, who can’t hold a job. As we discover in this book, his own family of origin is so dysfunctional that it is no mystery why he ended up the way he is. He isn’t mean, but he is clueless sometimes.

Ned loses his job - because he lied about his qualifications - and the family sets off to return to the mother’s inherited home in Massachusetts. They first have to visit the deathbed of a woman who took Ned in as a young man. She gives him a mysterious bag of money from his equally flaky brother. Under the circumstances, they assume it might be stolen. Or not, because nobody really has any idea. They then set off to find the brother, John, a trip which leads them to Las Vegas, and then Elko, Nevada. All kinds of stuff happens, none of which is good or pleasant, honestly, and they meet more of Ned’s family, most of whom are as dysfunctional as Ned, and less pleasant in the bargain.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not in any way opposed to “realistic” literature. I even enjoy novels which focus on characters which are not always pleasant, but are humanly complex. I’ve made no secret of my love for Anthony Trollope, among others, who write realistic tragedies. But I generally prefer that there be something to like. My experience (for what it is worth) is that there is plenty of dysfunction to go around, but that there is also a lot of good to be found. I guess I could compare it to a few short stories by Elizabeth Spencer (I reviewed Starting Over here), who also wrote about damaged relationships. One big difference, of course, is that Spencer isn’t writing for ages 9-12.

There were some good moments, such as the scene in the diner early in the book. Horvath has a real skill for observing humanity, and this comes out in her other books as well. If the rest of the book had show this degree of humor, it would have been nice.

Perhaps the worst part, for me, was the fact that the book just ended, without any real resolution of anything. Jane doesn’t really develop during the story, unless you consider gradual disillusionment to be a positive development. I know this tends to happen at that age anyway - I went through some of it myself - but it shouldn’t be the chief character development. Goodness knows that age is hard enough in real life, without it being that way in fiction too.

I won’t belabor the point further. I’ll just note that I had been thinking we might make Horvath a regular in our rotation, but I am kind of worried that there will be more “realism” and less humor and adventure in her books for tweens. If the kids want to read that kind of book, fine, but I’m not sure it is going to work for road trips, which in our case are a lot more fun than the sort Horvath took us on in this book.

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

This book is a collection of seven longish essays and articles by the late David Foster Wallace, perhaps best known for his novel, Infinite Jest. The title essay is a true classic, but the others are also intriguing and worth reading.

This was my first real exposure to Wallace, as he was too modern to rate inclusion in any of my literature courses - and in any event, didn’t really come to widespread attention until I was already in law school.

In addition to his writing, Wallace was also an English professor at a variety of institutions, culminating in several years at Pomona College. He suffered from depression for decades, although he was able to control it with medication. Eventually, however, it lost effectiveness, and other therapies were likewise unsuccessful, and he committed suicide at age 46. In a few key ways, his untimely end resembles that of Robin Williams, who likewise succumbed to despair that he was ultimately unable to overcome. I mention this primarily because that tinge of despair is never completely absent from his writing. 

"David Foster Wallace" by Steve Rhodes - originally posted to Flickr as David Foster Wallace. 

Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Because the essays are mostly unrelated, I discuss each separately.

“Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley”

This is one of the shorter essays, and it concerns Wallace’s days as a competitive tennis player during his school days. He was apparently good enough to compete in regional tournaments, but not so good as to rise to the highest echelons. He was persistent, but not overpowering; and patient, but not flawless.

His dispassionate and critical view of himself is one of the charms of the piece - and a microcosm of one thing that is delightful about his writing. Throughout all of his essays in this collection, at least the ones in which he appears, he is as critical of himself as of others. He subjects himself to even more scrutiny than his subjects - and he is hardly easy on those he writes about. It’s not so much self-effacing humor (although there is that) as his chagrin that he is even sillier than those he laughs at.

In addition to capturing the game in a memorable manner, this essay also contains plenty of the color of the rural Illinois of Wallace’s childhood.

“E UINBUS PLURAM: Television and U.S. Fiction”

This extended discussion of the relationship of television, postmodernism, and their combined effect on fiction writing, is one that I am not sure I have succesfully managed to wrap my brain around. For one thing, my knowledge of literary theory is pretty limited. (Probably the result of a high school curriculum that didn’t believe anything after The Grapes of Wrath was worth reading, and no serious literature class during my higher education.) Thus, some of the “postmodern” terminology required further research, and I’m still not sure how solid my understanding is.

However, I think that I understood the central point: fiction’s usual role in revealing the flaws and hypocrisy of culture has been usurped, because television both creates modern mass culture, and slyly mocks it even as it creates it. I’m kind of inclined to agree with Wallace, even as I fail to exactly resonate with his point. I believe this is due to a secondary gap on my part: I really don’t watch much TV, and have an extremely short tolerance for it. I’ll just admit that I like reading better, and don’t have the patience to sit through more than an hour or so a week. (Except occasionally on vacation when I can watch Food Network or Discovery.) So, I really can’t say I am part of the “mass culture” of which he speaks. I try to keep up with enough to hold a discussion, but, well, I’d rather go read something or walk up a mountain.

There are, however, some outstanding observations in this essay. First is that many avid TV watchers love to watch other people - but don’t want to be watched themselves. Thus, TV can be addictive to a certain kind of person.

I happen to believe this is why television also appeals so much to lonely people. To voluntary shut-ins. Every lonely human I know watches way more than the average U.S. six hours a day. The lonely, like the fictive, love one-way watching. For lonely people are usually lonely not because of hideous deformity or odor or obnoxiousness - in fact there exist today support- and social groups for persons with precisely these attributes. Lonely people tend, rather, to be lonely because they decline to bear the psychic costs of being around other humans. They are allergic to people.

Another great point Wallace makes is that those who demonize television as the cause of poor taste and commercialism (and there are many), show their historical ignorance. As Wallace puts it, their propter hoc isn’t even post hoc. To wit, the observation by Alexis de Tocqueville from Democracy in America (1835) that Americans sought “spectacles vehement and untutored and rude” that aimed to “stir the passions more than to gratify the taste.”

One more that really struck home for me was argument that he had with a “grey eminence” at a workshop who insisted that any story should eschew “any feature which serves to date it” because “serious fiction must be Timeless.” When Wallace protested that this man’s own work was clearly set in his own times, he tried to backtrack and explain how his cultural references were “timeless” while Generation X’s were the “frivolous Now.” This could well describe most of the current generation gap, which has resulted in an endless succession of dismissive and insulting articles by the Boomer generation whining about how awful the young people are.

“Getting Away from Already Being Pretty Much Away from It All”

This essay is best discussed in connection with the title essay, because the two have much in common. “Getting Away” was written first, when Harper’s sent Wallace to cover the Illinois State Fair. As a result of the success of the article, Harper’s gave him the assignment which led to the latter essay.

There is so much delightful snark that it is difficult to pick just a few lines. My own Kern County has a fair which takes itself way too seriously - much like the State Fair in this essay. The people who attend, likewise, fit many of the categories of those he describes, from the carnies to the aggies, from the snake oil salesmen to the local talent competitions. If it weren’t for the tour de force that the title essay is, I would say this one was the most fun. The best line is from the woman that accompanies Wallace during some of the fair. She quotes her father as describing the smell of pigs as “like Death his very own self is takin’ a shit.”

“Greatly Exaggerated”

This is the shortest essay of the bunch, and deals with deconstructionism in literary theory. I mentioned earlier that I am not a real scholar in this area, but this essay did more to bring a degree of understanding than my own research. (It occurs to me that it would have been interesting to have Wallace as a professor - assuming he was as good in person as in writing…)

The one idea in particular stood out to me: the essence of the written word is absence. We are absent when the author writes, and the author is absent when we read. Thus, we are left with the words only. The question of interpretation is thus complex. For an originalist (to borrow a term from law), the focus is to determine what the author originally meant, rather than what he said. But another method of determining meaning would be that meaning assigned by the reader, who may or may not have the same assumptions and background as the author. So what does the writing mean? Do the words have meaning apart from the author’s intent? Apart from the reader’s understanding? And is there a single, exclusive, meaning? One could clearly go down the rabbit hole here.

I found this to be the most fascinating part of the book - and one reason I would consider buying it for my own shelves. It is easy (for someone not a literature major) to dismiss deconstructionism when one is talking about the literature of the past. After all, when I read Shakespeare or Dickens or Frost, or whomever, I can derive enjoyment and meaning without having to think too deeply. (Although I often do.)

However, this particular issue really hit close to home when it comes to the interpretation of the Bible. After all, we Evangelicals take the interpretation deadly seriously. (I don’t mean that figuratively. Some issues in the past - and present - can be literal matters of life and death.) For us, there is a triple issue of absence. We were, of course, absent (by 2000 or more years) from the original writing. The human authors are absent from us as we read it. Depending on one’s view of what “inspiration” means, one has the question of the third, Divine author. To what extent was God “present” at the writing? For some, this is held to mean literal dictation of every word. For others, “wrote as they were moved” means something far less than a mere amanuensis. And then, likewise, to what extent is God with us as we read? And how is that interpretation affected by his presence? We wrestle daily with the question of the meaning of the words. Do they mean what the human authors believed them to mean? (If yes, then slavery and polygamy should be condoned or even encouraged.) Do they mean what the reader believes them to mean? And which reader? Do the words have extrinsic meaning in and of themselves apart from either the intent of the human authors or the reader? We make these judgment calls all the time, and yet we rarely acknowledge that these are even decisions. Perhaps a post for another time…

“David Lynch Keeps His Head”

This essay recounts Wallace following Lynch around on the set for a few days during the filming of Lost Highway. I have never seen a David Lynch film, so I’ll admit that most of the references went over my head. However, Wallace’s keen eye and ear for human nature make this essay fascinating nonetheless. I’ll just quote one observation, relegated to a footnote in the original, after noting a certain coldness in Lynch’s work, which Wallace ascribed in part to his solipsism: “solipsism being not exactly the cheery crackling hearth of psychopilosophical orientations.”

“...Michael Joyce…”

The complete title for this one is a paragraph long, so I’ll shorten it. This essay is about professional tennis player Michael Joyce’s performance at the Canadian Open. And, it is about the difference between the very best, and the merely world class. Joyce never made it to the top, but he was better than all but the top 70 or so players in the world. As with the other tennis essay, Wallace can bring a scene alive, even to someone like me who cares little about tennis.

“A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”

One of the best books I have ever read about travel remains Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad. Twain may not have invented the travelogue, but he, more than anyone else, created the unique (and perhaps uniquely American) “snarkalogue.” (Sadly, “snarky” is not related to Lewis Carroll’s poem, but to a German word for “snort.”) Twain’s irreverent take on travel became a bit of an American tradition; a parallel, perhaps, to the phenomenon of the Ugly American. (I’ve been both in my time…)

This essay is very much within the same tradition as Twain’s. I was particularly reminded of Twain’s lesser known Following The Equator, which likewise tells of a voyage, while interjecting a surprising amount of serious social commentary and introspection. Wallace observes that cruises seem to be particularly popular among a certain demographic that is confronting their own mortality. The “pampering” and carefully managed and curated experience is calculated to drown out this existential dread and (for Wallace) despair. I’ll admit, I am not particularly eager to experience a cruise. For one thing, I am an introvert, and a bit of a mild agoraphobe (much like Wallace - although I don’t suffer from his depression). The thought of being in close quarters with thousands of other people is a bit daunting. Much like Disneyland, which I enjoy...in limited doses...and need to recover from afterward.

Wallace is at his best in this article, lampooning the excesses of many, skewering the advertising-industrial complex, poking fun at himself, and all the while nailing the greater psychological issues that plague all of us. It is a painful look in the mirror, and an uncomfortably relevant revelation of the way we (relatively wealthy Americans) whistle past the graveyard. 

The MV Zenith, the ship Wallace cruised on. Picture by Adrien Castel,

Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

 

 Naturally, Wallace calls this ship the Nadir throughout the book...

Grounded by Seth Stevenson

Source of book: Borrowed from the library.
Date originally posted on Facebook: February 7, 2011

I am slowly reposting my old reviews on the blog. This one is from the early days, before I felt free to write long posts. Hmm, not sure if that was bad or good. Anyway, this book was a fun and quick read. 

***

While the travelogue has been a part of the literary tradition at least since the days of the Roman Empire, it was Mark Twain that set the standard for the snarky American version. (As a bonus, we can discuss whether “snark” should derive from a portmanteau of “snide” and “remark” or from Lewis Carroll’s poem.) In any case, SethStevenson’s book is firmly in the Twain tradition, with a nod to Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days.

Stevenson is a contributor to Slate.com, which is where I discovered him. He formerly wrote the “Ad Report Card”, a witty (and thoroughly snarky) deconstruction of current advertisements, primarily television ads.

This book recounts his circumnavigation of the globe using only surface transportation. Stevenson and his then girlfriend had in common a wanderlust, which lead them to quit their jobs and circle the globe with a purpose: avoid air travel at all costs. This is apparently harder than one would think.

This book is a quick and easy read. No small print, archaic language, or diary entries to slow it down. Humor abounds, as Stevenson is able to laugh at all of their misfortunes.

Stevenson and his girlfriend travel by freighter, cruise ship, ferry, train, bus, car, and bicycle. They cross every longitudinal line, and also the equator twice, covering in excess of 25,000 miles.

My favorite scenes: Traveling in a Russian train with a couple of Russian guys that fit all the stereotypes, including the huge bottle of vodka. Stevenson willing himself to the top of a hill on a bicycle in Vietnam. The ubiquitous Filipino cover band found anywhere in South Asia.

While this book will never become the classic at the level of Innocents Abroad, it makes a fun weekend read.

Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne

Source of book: We listened to this on audiobook - but I also own a hardback.

As my kids have gotten older, we have taken to listening to audiobooks on our longer vacation drives. I haven’t written about most of them, but I did mention Thank You, Jeeves, which we listened to about a year ago.

(For the record, my kids are particularly fond of everything Beverly Cleary. We have also listened to the delightfully subversive Matilda by Roald Dahl, and a couple of the Mrs. Pigglewiggle books.)

This time, my wife selected Jules Verne for the long book for the drive. I discovered Verne early in life, and had read this and most of his easily available books before the end of high school. I discussed the one I missed until later, The Mysterious Island, here.

This particular book may well be Verne’s most popular, although 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is still widely known, if not necessarily read. Most people, if they were honest, would probably admit that they saw the Disney movie, and left it at that.

Which is really too bad. Part of the fun of Jules Verne is reading how he tries to describe technology using 19th Century language. Particularly since he is describing stuff that hasn’t been invented - but turns out to be very close to how he describes it.

In some ways, Around the World in 80 Days is less of a Science Fiction novel than a straight up adventure. There was nothing futuristic about steam ships or railroads when he wrote it. There were several recent developments which made the idea possible, not the least of which was the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in the United States. On the other hand, Verne explores another intriguing idea, even if it is merely implicit. Phileas Fogg is a representative of a recurring type in Verne’s novels: the man of science, completely objective, and devoid of the bias of emotion. (At least on the surface.) Perhaps he might be looked on as a proto-Spock.

Since the plot is reasonably well known, I won’t summarize it. If you aren’t familiar with it, please don’t go rent a movie version. Find the book! It is a rip roaring yarn, full of twists and turns, and full of imagination.

A few things particularly struck me this time through.

First, by coincidence, we came to the part where the adventurers are riding the Transcontinental Railroad over the Sierra Nevada mountains of California just as we were making the descent from Truckee to Reno. We could see the actual tracks they would have traveled from our car. Pretty cool. Although Verne only visited the United States once, and never traveled west of Niagara Falls, he accurately described the route. (It is also interesting that the United States is a common setting of many of his books.) 

 The Railroad near the California and Nevada state line, by the Truckee River.

Second, Verne’s stereotypes of the English and the Americans are pretty funny. Verne, of course, was French, like Fogg’s servant, Passepartout, from whose point of view the story is essentially told. There are several Englishmen in the story. Fogg, of course, who represents the punctual, exact, emotionless idea of the stoic Englishman. Fix, the dogged British detective. The Colonel stationed in India. These are well known stereotypes, of course.

The American ones are more outlandish, from the description of the election brawl to the hothead that is determined to duel Fogg, to the painful (if common for the time) portrayal of Native Americans as stupid savages.

The final one I must admit truly surprised me. When I last read this, I was pretty young, and wasn’t equipped to notice when authors defied the taboos of their time.

Verne almost completely avoided writing female characters. Most of his books are completely devoid of them. However, in this one book, he creates one, and she is more memorable than I recalled.

For those who haven’t read the book, Fogg and Passepartout, with the help of their military acquaintance, rescue a beautiful young Indian woman as she is about to be burned to death in her husband’s funeral pyre. So far, so good. A damsel in distress, rescued by strong and noble men.

It is later in the story that things get more interesting. Aouda may be a beautiful and “exotic” woman, but she is no shrinking violet. During the rough weather at sea, it is she, and not the violently ill Fix who remains on deck. She is soon calculating schedules and assisting in keeping things moving alongside Passepartout. Considering when this was written, this was already pushing the boundary a bit.

An illustration from the novel "Around the World in Eighty Days" by Jules Verne painted by Alphonse de Neuville and/or Léon Benett 1872

It is after that Verne goes beyond the standard Victorian plot. A couple of decades after Around the World In 80 Days was written, the English novelist, H. Rider Haggard (the inspiration in large part for the Indiana Jones books) also wrote of “exotic” and powerful women. The demi-goddess-like Ayesha is one, but Foulata (from King Solomon’s Mines) more closely resembles Aouda. Haggard, though he writes of these possible interracial romances, he chickens out at the last, and kills off the women before crossing that line.

Verne has no such hangups. [Spoiler alert] Not only do Fogg and Aouda get married, she proposes to him! Such French scandalousness, I suppose. The timing is interesting too. She proposes when both of them believe he has lost his bet and therefore his fortune. When it is discovered that he has actually won, and therefore isn’t penniless, she offers to release him from his promise. Rather than think (as most in that time would) that he would be lowering himself by marrying her, he remains smitten (as does she), and by all accounts it is a happy match.

I highly recommend Verne’s novels. This one is a good place to start, but I do encourage that one read the others as well.

Despite the fact that the book started a little slowly, my kids really got into the story. The back seats were, shall we say, very quiet, for hours during the trip. My eldest daughter said she was surprised that they got married in the end. All of them found Passepartout’s endearing foibles to be amusing. So read Verne to your kids as well.

Running Away to Home by Jennifer Wilson

Source of Book: Borrowed from the Library

I am participating in an online book club, hosted by my friend Carrie, who has a popular book blog, Reading to Know. If you want to join in or see what we are reading, the link to that post is here:

Our selection for January was Beyond Opinion, edited by Ravi Zacharias

First, a quick synopsis of the book. Jennifer Wilson is a middle-class, Midwestern, married mother of two. She is also a writer by vocation. Fed up with the rat race, she and her husband plan to spend a year abroad, and live for the entire summer in a small village in Croatia – the one her ancestors left 100 years ago. During their stay, she attempts to get in touch with her roots, simplify her life, and come to some sort of peace with herself. It does not go exactly how she planned, but she learns some things about herself and others.

I want to give a quick explanation before I launch into my screed about book genres.

I enjoyed this book. I think it was mostly well written, and avoided most of the faults of the genre in which it has been cast.

This is a recent book, which means that it was selected for publishing because it met the publisher’s vision for a certain genre. (I’m sorry to be so cynical about this, but genres have become increasingly rigid and niche marketed.) Thus, this book has been written, and probably edited too, to fit into the “exotic escapist trip leading to self discovery” genre, even if the story itself doesn’t quite fit the mold.

Wilson deserves serious credit, in my opinion, for bucking the cardinal rule of this genre, which states that the woman should learn that the main impediment to her happiness is her husband. (See Exhibit A: Eat, Pray, Love; Exhibit B(1), Julie and Julia; and Exhibit B(2), Cleave) Rather, she comes to a greater appreciation of her husband and kids. If anything, she writes quite charitably about her husband.

I do not want to create the impression that I did not enjoy this book, because I did. It is an interesting story, and the characters are memorable. Wilson is admirably introspective in the true sense. She attempts throughout her adventures to be honest about her own faults, and refuses to blame others for them.

This is where I wondered what this book would have been had she been honest with herself at the outset of the trip about what it really was. Wilson, like the typical writer of these stories, is financially blessed. She and her husband, through good jobs and reasonably frugal living, are able to live abroad on their savings for a full year. In addition, her writing work is likely to be there when she gets back – in fact, she gets a book deal. Her husband is confident in his ability to find work in his field upon return. Thus, they get to spend a year without the obligation to work. And, you know, I would find my life to be much simpler if I could ditch the job too.

I agree that there are some things we can simplify. We do not need a large number of possessions. We would have less housework to do if we had smaller houses. The endless parade of activities cut into any time we might have to reflect or build friendships. But this isn’t really what we mean when we say we want to simplify.

Thus, I believe that this is the unacknowledged fantasy of the whole thing. We readers, indeed all of us, would like our lives to be less stressful. We would like things to be simpler. We would like to go through each day with a minimum of obligations. So I think that if Wilson had been honest, she would have realized that this wasn’t some quest to “find herself”, or “simplify her life.” It was, plain and simple, an extended vacation from obligation. It also happened to be an adventure, and a complete change from what she had been doing. However, all of that was dependent on her ability to escape from a significant portion of her responsibilities.

I would contrast this with her ancestors, who left Croatia for the usual reason. Like most of the immigrants throughout the history of our nation, they had a lack of opportunities at home, and the hope of greater things in a new land. They left with little other than the clothes on their backs, and worked long, hard hours for their food and shelter. It was, perhaps, an adventure, but it wasn’t about “self discovery”.

For the vast majority of human history, and indeed, over a large portion of the globe in these modern times, people have had to work hard to survive. “Simplification” meant finding some way of making a task easier.

Books of this sort therefore connect with both a fantasy and with a deep fear. At about Wilson’s age when she wrote this, many if not most of us realize that we are halfway though our lives, and we will have spent the majority of it sleeping and performing our obligations. Very little of our lifespan is actually spent doing what we wish to do. Thus, the fantasy isn’t really about living a simple life. It is about being able to have others do the mundane for us, so that we can chase fulfillment. The dream of living in past times is really the dream of being wealthy in a past time. Being a member of the Nobility, so that others will clean the house, grow the food, raise the kids.

This is where I believe the genre caters to a lazy part of our psyche, and why it often begins or ends with a divorce. Few of us can afford to quit our jobs. Even fewer of us would desert our children. We probably would not trade our homes for a small shack. How then, can we fulfill the fantasy? How can we escape our obligations? Well, about all that is left is to dump the spouse. And so it goes.

Ok, I’ve had my rant. Again, I do not want this to reflect badly on the book, because Wilson largely avoids these faults.

I want to point out a few things that stuck with me.

First, I love Wilson’s sense of humor about her life. She knows better than to take herself completely seriously, which is why she is able to write affectionately about the foibles of others.

I liked her lament that she never really learned about her cultural heritage. Her ancestors were embarrassed, so they did their best to show only the Americanized side.

“I wished I had more to teach Sam and Zadie [her children] about our roots. I knew not one recipe. Few Croatian words. No helpful bedtime stories in which the misbehaving child gets disemboweled by wolves.”

Wilson also describes the details of Croatian life in a memorable way. I liked her description of the shocking effect it had on her children to realize that meat comes from real, live animals. Her son Sam swore off of meat for much of the trip after seeing a whole sheep roasted. I’m more like Wilson’s husband Jim, who pulls off in a village in the middle of nowhere when he sees a whole pig being put into a roadside barbeque.

I’ll admit that I liked Jim quite a bit from this story. Although I will never be as socially easy-going as he was throughout this adventure, I really admire his ability. From the very beginning, he takes a laid-back approach to the whole adventure, which is, after all, his wife’s idea. He does his best to have fun, get along, make friends, and embrace the craziness of the whole thing. And, of course, imbibe alcohol with the guys. Naturally, everyone loves him, and he has the time of his life. By the end of the summer, at the going-away party, he is toasted as the non-Croatian who turns out to be the most Croatian of them all.

I also had to laugh at the incident where Zadie, the 4 year old, manages to shatter a glass by biting into it really hard. My kids, of course, would never do that. Nope. No way…

Finally, I really loved the story of finding the source of the one river. I would love to take that hike someday, and find the cool pool where the water just bubbles up.

As a conclusion, I would recommend immersing oneself in the story itself, and tuning out the “finding myself” frame to the narrative. Wilson has a story to tell, but the conclusion is not what Wilson (or her editor) feels the need to make it in the final chapter. Wilson has a good time, makes friends, connects with her husband and kids, but she doesn’t really find an epiphany. The last little bit seems tacked on to make it fit the mould, rather than because it is truly Wilson’s conclusion.

Note on alcohol: Several of the other members of the book club have made particular mention of the abundant drinking in this book. There certainly is plenty, including plenty of drinking before lunch, which doesn’t even sound good. Wilson’s host, Robert, is an alcoholic, even by Croatian standards.

My contribution to the discussion is this. First, we Americans still have a hangover (pardon the pun) from prohibition. Most cultures, and a portion of our own, have a history of social alcohol use that is reviled by other segments of our society. Thus, you have Baptists, Mormons, and other groups with a tendency to demand total abstinence. I would note that, regardless of the culture, there seems to be a certain percentage of alcoholics, even during prohibition.

My second thought is that we Americans have a weird way of embracing the alcohol-saturated cultures of Europe, while we turn our noses up at those here in our own country, particularly if they have brown or black skin, or watch car races. One country’s riff-raff is apparently another country’s beloved peasants.

Note on coarse language: There is a moderate amount of vulgarity and profanity in this book. It does not rise to the level of, say, Tom Clancy or other modern pulp authors, but it is there. Whether this is a problem for the reader may depend on whether the reader ever has lived outside of a conservative, Christian, middle-class community. Where I grew up, this book would barely get a PG rating, so I did not find it particularly distracting. There is nothing here I did not hear by third grade, at the latest. I am not fond of authors who use “earthy language” to cover for their lack of descriptive powers, but I think that Wilson used language judiciously, primarily when quoting other people or describing their conversations. I did not feel that she went for shock value or used it in a careless manner. One of the other members of our book club pointed out that both the language and the alcohol are accurately described, and that the book would not have been honest had these been omitted.

Links to reviews by other book club members:

My friend Carrie
"The other Carrie", who picked this book.
Steph, who has actually been to Croatia, and posted some great pictures.

BerlinPoet