The Resting Spot in Adventure and Travel Writing

Adventure and travel writing covers many elements of travel, most often the act of going somewhere. However, along one’s journey there must always be a place to rest; a place to stop, catch one’s breath, and start again. Susan Orlean discusses a place like this in a short story entitled A Place to Disappear. At Khao San people gather to make plans, young and old come together to take the next step on their journey. Graham Greene told his tale of a place between places when he wrote Across the Bridge. Paul Theroux, travel writer extraordinaire, wrote several short stories dealing with the resting place and the elements that go along with it. Unlike Orlean and Graham who tie all of the elements of the nonexistent place into one story, Theroux speaks within three different stories. Whenever a resting place is discussed in short stories, the author always discusses the characters that occupy the town and the mood that town provokes in its travelers.

Susan Orlean’s A Place to Disappear observes a place in Thailand where people go in lieu of someplace else. Khao San Road is a place where travelers can rest, check their internet and change their identity. Orlean mentions a fantasy of hers about a nameless man who does just that. “In it, a middle-aged middlebrow middle manager from Phoenix is deposited at the western end of the road, near the Chanasongkhran police boothâÂ?¦He then gets a leather thong bracelet for one wrist and a silver cuff for the other, stops at Golden Lotus Tattoo for a few Chinese characters on his shoulder, gets his eyebrows pierced at Herbal House Healthy Center, has blond extensions braided into his hair, trades his briefcase for a Stussy backpack and a Hmong fabric waist pack, watches twenty-minutes of The Phantom Menace or The Blair Witch Project at Buddy Beer, goes into Hello Internet CafÃ?© and registers as ‘zenmasterbob’ on hotmail.com, falls in love with a Norwegian aromatherapist he meets in the communal shower at Joe Guest House, takes off with her on a trek through East Timor, and is never seen again” (195).

Orlean has seen so many travelers go through Khao San that she is able to describe them all in one person. ‘Zenmasterbob’ starts his journey dreaming of something better. He changes bits and bits about himself until suddenly, he is barely recognizable. Through his travels, the middle-aged man has completely changed his identity and found his peace. In places between places, people can give in to their dreams and change their identity. Something about the nonexistence of the place, the sheer illusion of a society, allows people to let go and give in to what the town offers.

Khao San is not only a place for a person to find a new identity, but a stepping stone to the next part of a person’s adventure. An anecdote at the beginning of the story tells of a drunk man hitting on some Scottish girls. The girls ignore the drunkard and, like many other travelers in Thailand, continue making plans on how to get to their next destination. They are staying at a cheap hotel they do not know the name of and living life to its fullest in a town that exists only as a place to stop and take a look around. “They thought Khao San was horrible because it was so crowded and loud and the room in the guesthouse was so dingy, but it was brilliant, too, because it was so inexpensive, and there were free movies playing at all the bars, and because they’d already run into two friends from home” (192). People sit around outside, drinking beer and planning their next move in A Place to Disappear. Through Orlean’s words, one gets the idea that the ambiance is relaxed and fun and that Khao San is, in a way, its own little travelers utopia. Each eccentric character, there for fun and adventure, gets along with all the other eccentric characters.

Even though the tourists are there for only a day or two before they decide to take a tour of someplace or another, one is under the impression they sit around swapping stories and drinking beer late at night when the town comes alive. Orlean describes Khao San as “a new sort of place” where everything is powered by the young, anchored by the internet and has no time or location. “Khao San is now the travel hub for half the world, a place that prospers on the desire to be someplace else” (194). Travelers know Khao San as the place they can go to get cheap tickets for another trip, a place they can check their internet for a small amount, a place to people watch while drinking beers and overhearing free movies. Khao San is a place in between places, a place travelers go to stop and catch their breath before continuing on their great adventures.

In contrast to Orlean’s upbeat story, Greene writes his fictitious and depressing view of a place between places in Across the Bridge. This nameless town in Mexico is a lost place, it does not have a name or an exact location. Greene’s town is a place people do not intend to get stuck at. “He was staying in the best hotel, but you don’t get good hotels in this border town: nobody stays in them more than a night” (267).

There is no interest in this place for anyone, it is cheap, dirty and has very little in ways of entertainment. Mr. Calloway, an eccentric man stuck in the border town due to dirty money business, becomes the narrator’s entertainment. The narrator says several times that although the story was a sad one for Calloway, it was pure comedy for him watching it. The unnamed border town between Mexico and the United States is Greene’s place between places. In this border town a character named Mr. Calloway longs for something more. Through Greene’s “the grass is always greener” approach, one can see the despair that can occur if one stays at a nowhere place too long.

Greene reveals the oddity of this nowhere place by describing a character named Mr. Calloway. Calloway was running a dirty business and now is stuck, waiting, in this Mexican town. He can look over the bridge into the United States and dream, yet he cannot pass over and he cannot spend his money. Instead he is trapped in his own actions in this small town with only his dog. “The dog attracted your attention at once; for it was very nearly an English setter, only something had gone wrong with the tail and the feathering” (266). Across the Bridge builds on “the grass is always greener” way of looking at life. Mr. Calloway sits in the cheap version of the town across the bridge, looking across and dreaming of the better life he could live on the other side. After Calloway’s dog disappears over the bridge, he kept “thinking about how a dog could just walk across like that, and a human being, an immortal soul, was bound here in the awful routine of the little walk and the unspeakable meals and the aspirin of the botica” (274).

No matter where Calloway was he was always longing to be someplace else. He finally crosses into America only to find a mundane life over there. “I do believe he’d come down to look at the Mexican side when he found there was nothing but the drugstore and the cinemas and the paper shops on the American” (275). Calloway is a man trapped within his own existence. He has made a poor choice and is suffering from it in a town that does not even have a name. The nameless town and the disparaging Calloway show a dismal view of the place between places.

Graham Greene brings out the gloomy disposition of a nowhere town in Mexico through characterization. The main focus of Across the Bridge is Calloway. However, Greene reinstates his theme of despair through other characters as well. Two pages into the narrative, Greene tells of a policeman who expected more whenever he crossed over. “He was disgusted; he had had some idea that when he crossed the bridge life was going to be different, so much more color and sun, and-I suspect-, love, and all he found were wide mud streets where the nocturnal rain lay in pools, and mangy dogs, smells and cockroaches in his bedroom, and the nearest to love, the open door of the Academia Comercial, where pretty mestizo girls sat all the morning learning to typewrite.

Tip-tap-tip-tap-tip-perhaps they had a dream, too-jobs on the other side of the bridge, where life was going to be so much more luxurious, refined and amusing” (269). Greene tells of the policeman’s disappointments and the young girls dismal dreams. Through characterization Greene gives a sad version of Orlean’s A Place to Disappear. Everyone who resides in the border town in Across the Bridge, whether it be for a month or longer, did not plan on being there. No one had the intention of staying in the town, the town just grabbed them by accident whenever they were on their way towards their dreams.

The resting place of towns is an element that shows up in every travel story whether it is nonfiction or out of the imagination of the author. While Susan Orlean and Graham Greene create an entire short story around this place and the characters in it, Paul Theroux spreads the elements of the resting spot over three different travel stories. In A Love-Scene After Work, Theroux discusses the effects of writing in a foreign place. He feels alone and abandoned and compares writing in a foreign country to learning a new language. “Nothing comes out right the first time, and you are not so much writing as learning a language, inching along in what seems at times like another tongue” (86). Theroux accurately compares the disillusionment one feels when learning a new language to writing in a foreign place. In A Love-Scene After Work, Theroux describes the mood that one feels in a place between places. “But the fact of being in a foreign place has made you small. You are not a public figure (public figures who are habitually vocal are deported), simply an English teacher” (87). Orlean describes a fun, exciting, meet-and-greet place in Khao San, Greene describes a dismal entrapment in the Mexican border town and Theroux describes the loneliness that one can feel in a place other than home.

In Stranger on a Train: The Pleasures of Railways, Theroux uses a train to describe the resting place. Orlean and Greene described a city, but Theroux talks about the train as a place between places. Travelers stop at Khao San or the border town before moving on with their adventure, whereas the characters in Stranger on a Train use the train to get them to their next stop. Theroux says that “a train journey is travel; everything else-planes especially-is transfer, your journey beginning when you arrive” (128). Although he states here that a train is travel and not transfer, he discusses characters in the same manner as a transfer town travel story. “A rail journey is virtually the only occasion in travel on which complete strangers bare their souls, because the rail passenger-the calmest of travelers-has absolutely nothing to lose” (127). Eccentric characters are common to a town in between travels. Theroux informs his reader on how to start a conversation with these characters in Stranger on a Train. “To get an Indian on “The Howrah Mail” talking you have first to answer a number of his questions: nationality, occupation, marital status, destination, birth sign, and how much you paid for your wrist watch” (127).

On Theroux’s train rides he meets many odd characters. At one point he tells of people he has seen fall in love and even a man who died. “Courtship, copulation and death: it is all the proof I need that the most intense experiences we know are enacted on trains” (129). While Orlean and Greene saw a town as a place between places, a resting spot for the weary traveler, Theroux used a train to illustrate his place of rest between adventures.

The last story Theroux describes a place of rest in is A Circuit of Corsica. In this story, Theroux gives many of the elements for a resting place. He details the setting and calming mood of a place set apart from any other by describing the rich landscape. Much like Bruce Chatwin’s descriptions of Patagonia, Theroux relates the majestic mountains and beautiful landscape. “In its three climates it combines the high Alps, the ruggedness of North Africa and the choicest landscapes of Italy, but most dramatic are the peaks which are never out of view and show in the upheaval of rock a culture that is violent and heroic” (165). Corsica is a magnificent place known for its beauty and its heroes. Theroux lists many well-known people such as Napoleon and Christopher Columbus who have a connection with this area of the world. Theroux continues to describe the landscape as “just weird enough to be beautiful and too large to be pretty” (165). Corsica has cliffs, a fjord, beautiful coasts, mountains, forests and “beaches that have never known the pressure of a tourist’s footprint” (165). The mood Theroux is setting is that of a utopia. Corsica, through the paratactic descriptions, sounds like a Paradise to all.

Theroux also describes his encounter with some unconventional people in Corsica. Characterization is important in all stories, especially those dealing with travel. Just as Orlean and Greene described unusual characters in their stories, Theroux describes the nudists in A Circuit of Corsica. He mixes the first sighting of the nudist with the rough landscape and mood of the place. “On one of those terrible coast roads-bumper-scraping ruts, bottomless puddles, rocks in the middle as threatening and significant as Marxist statuary- I saw a hitch-hiker. She was about eighteen, very dark and lovely, in a loose gown, barefoot and carrying a basket” (165). Theroux is taken back by this beautiful vision in the midst of this horrid road. He states earlier how terrified he was of the drivers in Corsica and this quote restates his fear for the roads. However, while he is worrying about the safety of the roads, he comes across this beautiful vision who he says “could have been modeling the gown and awaiting the approach of a Vogue photographer” (165).

After picking her up and talking with her for a while, Theroux learns that she is a nudist. “She had been a nudist for about five years. Her mother had been running around naked for eleven years. And Papa? No, he wasn’t a nudist; he’d left home-clothed-about six years ago” (166). Theroux treats this interchange with an odd amount of humor and sarcasm. He seems to be in awe of this way of life while mocking it at the same time. Theroux tells an amusing story of a nudist hitch-hiker in his short story A Circuit of Corsica. His characterization in this story shows the elements of an odd character in a place separate from existence.

Lastly, Theroux instructs his readers on where to go and how to get around Corsica. Other stories tell of a nonexistent place as a resting spot before getting to the real adventure. One travels to this kind of town on accident or is just passing through. Corsica, on the other hand, is a resting place that offers its own excitement. Even though Corsica is a place where odd characters go to rest between trips, it also is a place to go for a trip. Theroux talks about how “underpopulated Corsica is, an emptiness of eucalyptus trees and deep blue hills, stubbly fields, and vineyards, and forests of cork oak and sweet chestnut. Ambitious Corsicans flee the island as soon as they can scrape the fare together, and the ones who stay rather despise the menial servicing jobs in hotels” (168). Corsica offers a place of escape for those who do not live there, and a home to run away from for the natives.

Theroux speaks of travel and home in another story entitled Summertime on the Cape. He says, “But the rest of us, for whom travel is the experience of There-and-Back, are capable of the longest journeys precisely because we have homes to return to” (298). Theroux educates his readers about Corsica by telling of the small towns unique to the area. He states that a traveler does not know whether the town has been freshly made or abandoned for years. He continues to talk about the Corsican’s lack of language and how “they speak French badly enough so that no visitor need feel self-conscious” (169).

Theroux handles the idea of a resting spot differently than Orlean or Greene. He tells of a place that is a resting spot, a home and a vacation. In Theroux’s A Circuit of Corsica, he educates the reader about a place that has something for everyone.
Travel literature focuses on tales of travel from place to place. In order to significantly plan a trip, though, one must have a place of rest. A resting place during travel is a place where people stop and then continue their journey. One never intends on staying at this place between places, nor do they plan on vacationing at the resting place. In order to write about the resting place, authors describe several different elements about the area: the setting, the characters, and the mood. Often, though, the most interesting part about travel writing is the characters one meets along the way.

Usually, whenever one stops in adventure and travel writing, it is to describe a particularly busy place with unusually odd characters. Rarely, though, one gets a glimpse at the place between the travels; the place where one sits to catch their breath and plan their next big adventure. Susan Orlean stops to write about a place where each night a new story can be heard from the travelers at the bar. A middle-aged man can enter the city devoid of an identity and leave with a new perspective on life. Khao San is a place overrun with youth excited about their adventures in cheap travel. The setting of Khao San is a crowded tourist-trap, the characters are various degrees of eccentric and the mood is like that of the television show Cheers, “everybody knows your name.” In the same manner, Graham Greene wrote a fictitious tale, Across the Bridge, about a border town in Mexico. The unnamed town is a cheap version of what is offered across the bridge in America. No one intends to stay in the border town, they just accidentally get stuck there while searching for their dreams. The setting is dirty, the characters are pitiable and the mood is bleak.

Paul Theroux did not package his experiences of a resting place in one handy short story. Instead, he wrote his ideas of a resting place into several travel essays. In A Love-Scene After Work, Theroux discusses the feelings one has in a foreign country. He says you feel small and unimportant. Theroux gives a different example of a resting place in Stranger on a Train. In this short story he tells of travelers on a train, waiting to get to their new destination. Theroux gives examples of odd characters and life that exists in this mode of transportation. A Circuit of Corsica is the closest thing to a packaged product Theroux offers his readers. Corsica is a beautiful area with a majestic landscape and towns that are young and old. Theroux describes the utopian setting, the unconventional characters and a mood that is relaxed yet never at ease. Another thing Theroux does in A Circuit of Corsica is he instructs his readers on how to behave if they ever travel to Corsica.

He tells of the natives and how some stay in Corsica for a vacation and others flee; how most of the Corsicans speak horrible French and no matter what language one may speak, one will fit right in. Theroux writes in A Circuit of Corsica about a resting place that does not serve as a jumping off place, but rather as an ending place. One does not go to Corsica and then go somewhere else, one goes somewhere else and then ends in Corsica. Orlean, Greene and Theroux write about characters and mood in their short stories about places that exist only to jump-start another adventure.