7 PERFECT ADVENTURE BOOKS. #TRAVELWRITING
Need some inspiration for your next adventure? These seven books will ignite your wanderlust...for better or worse.
John Steinbeck - Travels with Charley
The quintessential animal companion, cross-continental, road-trip romp. At age 58, Steinbeck traverses America with his French poodle, Charley. He dissects the real identity of the USA with piquant vignettes and memories that give the reader a better sense of Steinbeck's idiosyncrasies than any of his fictional works could. A series of little moments--like when the car breaks down miles from a service station and Steinbeck is rescued by a benevolent stranger in the middle of the night--are stitched together to create this wonderful mosaic of America by a man fighting with all his force against loneliness. Charley, who is endowed with the complexity of a Russian protagonist, keeps Steinbeck sane and barks only the truth.
"The best way to attract attention is to be lost. A man who seeing his mother starving to death on a path kicks her in the stomach to clear the way, will cheerfully devote several hours of his time giving wrong directions to a total stranger who claims to be lost."
Thomas de Quincey - Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
I first read this book in college for class on Romanticism. I think de Quincey invented Gonzo Journalism long before Hunter S. Thompson did. This is not only the most candid and beautifully written drug book of all time; I would argue that it's also one of the best adventure books. De Quincey makes opium-fueled peregrinations across London seem awfully adventurous. The vivid descriptions of his highs and lows as he experiments with the drug--the euphoric ambitions and crippling lethargy, warped sense of time, and revived childhood memories --are totally enthralling. This is a book about opium, but really it is a book about elevated consciousness. A masterpiece, at that.
"For it seemed to me as if then first I stood at a distance, and aloof from the uproar of life; as if the tumult, the fever, and the strife, were suspended; a respite granted from the secret burthens of the heart; a sabbath of repose; a resting from human labours. Here were the hopes which blossom in the paths of life, reconciled with the peace which is in the grave; motions of the intellect as unwearied as the heavens, yet for all anxieties a halcyon calm: a tranquility that seemed no product of inertia, but as if resulting from mighty and equal antogonisms; infinite activities, infinite repose."
Henry Miller - The Colossus of Maroussi
I am a huge Henry Miller fan. His writing is explosive. It leaps off the page and strikes at the heart of the mundane and unfeeling. Maroussi is a classic work of travel literature because of Miller's ability to connect his experience of a place (in this case, Greece, where he spent nine months) to life's biggest questions. Here, history and mythology accentuate Miller's never-ending quest for the good life to comprise a travel book that is really about an idea--or, more accurately, an ideal--of how to live fully.
"All this whimpering that is going on in the dark, this insistent, piteous plea for peace which will grow bigger as the pain and the misery increase, where is it to be found? Peace, do people imagine that it is something to be cornered, like corn or wheat? Is it something which can be pounced upon and devoured, as with wolves fighting over a carcass?"
Jon Krakauer - Into Thin Air
This book is chilling. I couldn't speak to anyone while I was reading Krakauer's vivid retelling of the 1996 Everest tragedy because I was so dumbfounded by the story. To clarify: Krakauer climbed Everest. He's not reporting as an outsider. The terror and sadness of this fateful climb will make you question what true adventure and heroism really are. This epic true story, like Krakauer's other melancholy masterpiece Into the Wild, is an important work of adventure nonfiction that makes you appreciate every breath you've ever taken, or ever will take.
"Above the comforts of Base Camp, the expedition in fact became an almost Calvinistic undertaking. The ratio of misery to pleasure was greater by an order of magnitude than any mountain I'd been on; I quickly came to understand that climbing Everest was primarily about enduring pain. And in subjecting ourselves to week after week of toil, tedium and suffering, it struck me that most of us were probably seeking above all else, something like a state of grace."
David Grann - The Lost City of Z
I intentionally listed this after Into Thin Air because it also makes me ask, "Why the hell would anyone do something like that?" Another well-researched tale of suffering disguised as pleasure, this recent bestseller tells the story of Lt. Colonel Percy Fawcett, an explorer who became obsessed (is there a stronger word?) with finding, well... something that was not meant to be found. A city, which he called Z, lured him into the treacherous Amazon jungle until all of its horrors were revealed to him (some of the insect descriptions almost made me vomit on my paperback edition). But what makes this such an enjoyable book is the way it alternates from Fawcett chapters to chapters about Grann, who assumed the same obsessiveness in writing the book as Fawcett did in finding the lost city. Grann even heads into the thickets of the Amazon himself, despite heavy admonishments from his wife, and, like Fawcett, finds nothing--yet everything--he was looking for.
"Loneliness is not intolerable when enthusiasm for a quest fills the mind."
Peter Matthiessen - The Snow Leopard
Peter Matthiessen died on April 5, 2014, and that was a sad day for millions. I can't write about him any better than The New York Times did for his obituary, but I can confirm that The Snow Leopard is a special book. For its lyrical beauty, which flows at a trekker's pace, this mesmerizing mass of Mountain Zen deserves the highest praise. Matthiessen takes us to the upper reaches of the Himalaya, where language is not in demand, yet his words get stronger with every step. As for the snow leopard: the looking is the finding.
"That happy-go-lucky spirit, that acceptance which is not fatalism but a deep trust in life, made me ashamed."
Paul Theroux - The Great Railway Bazaar
Something would be wrong about a list of travel books without Paul Theroux's name on it. He's an undeniably maestro of the genre. This is his first book and I must admit I didn't love it at first. The dialogue and characters are refreshingly sharp, but the plot drags. It's not a novel after all; it's a book about people on trains and what they think, do, and talk about. Yet the simplicity is masterful because it lets the reader feel Theroux's outsider-ness with him, rather than some overly polished and probably embellished fictional reconstruction. This journey book is a journey itself, and would still be a pleasure to read if you jumbled the pages first.
"But: all journeys were return journeys. The farther one traveled, the nakeder one got, until, towards the end, ceasing to be animated by any scene, one was most oneself, a man in a bed surrounded by empty bottles. The man who says, "I've got a wife and kids" is far from home; at home he speaks of Japan. But he does not know - how could he? - that the scenes changing in the train window from Victoria Station to Tokyo Central are nothing compared to the change in himself; and travel writing, which cannot but be droll at the outset, moves from journalism to fiction, arriving promptly as the Kodama Echo at autobiography. From there any further travel makes a beeline to confession, the embarrassed monologue in a deserted bazaar. The anonymous hotel room in a strange city..."
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