23 January 2006
False melancholia
This is Jaques, from Act IV Scene I of As You Like It (which I was watching last night when I should have been getting on with something more important to meet an imminent deadline), and it suddenly struck me that this is something of the attitude of the coffee-house wannabe travel writer, and indeed many a published one.
There's nothing fake about Jaques, who proves his wit and general despair at the state of things in many a comically depressing speech. But it's his manner that appeals so much to the wannabes, so many of whom think that striking the attitude of being a travel writer makes them by definition both thoughtful and interesting, and apparently makes it unnecessary to demonstrate that by writing in an interesting and thoughtful manner. 'I sat in the café and pondered China's long history,' and other dimwitted dross is supposedly interesting simply by virtue of who I am. It's no different from thinking that adopting a tragic manner and wearing a baggy shirt makes you a poet, or from thinking that the belief that there's a great novel inside you makes you a novelist. In all cases you have to deliver the goods to merit the reader's attention.
In times past readers might tolerate your tedious personality and lack of perception for want of being able to have your experiences themselves. But these days it's the non-travellers who are the exception and most travel writing is done for those who might like to have the same experiences, not for those who never will. So you'd better be offering something vivid about the destination, and not some teenage moody diary (or blog) entry.
Not that Jacques is clearly saying (although a later speech seems to suggest he may be, and I quite like to read it that way) that it's his travels that make him melancholy, but that his melancholy, compounded from many simples, is the Elizabethan equivalent of an iPod, and gives him something to think about while he's travelling. I often fall into a brown study on long Chinese bus and train journeys, but in general travel is an irritating process, full of tedious practicalities that tend to get in the way of a decent bit of melancholy, except in anticipation of the trip to the airport and all the rushing around. There's no time for sitting around in cafés pretending to be interesting.
Rosalind's retort offers a more down-to-earth reason for melancholy: A traveller! By my faith, you have great reason to be sad; I fear you have sold your own lands to see other men's; then, to have seen much and so have nothing, is to have rich eyes and poor hands.
Rich eyes and poor hands: now that describes travel writing pretty well.
Sadly those who can actually deliver Shakespeare-quality material as opposed to just posing in cafés (or in print) should be looking for employment elsewhere. Rare the editor who has any interest in printing anything thoughtful, and the reduction of all travel writing to simpering directory pieces of the Ten Places to go Dwarf-Tossing kind continues apace.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment