Four faded, tattered, ink stained notebooks covered four months, 28,000 miles, and the better part of every train stop from London to Tokyo and back again by way of vodka laced Siberia. By the time I put down the resulting compilation of those notebooks, Paul Theroux’sThe Great Railway Bazaar, I felt like I had come and gone again past the point of traveling return.
That’s when you know it’s a good travel book.
The Orient Express, the Khyber Pass Local, the Frontier Mail, The Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpur, and the Trans-Siberian Express. Armed with an extensive supply of tobacco, wine bottles, self-preservation, and literary sense, Paul Theroux takes the reader on a ride of all of these imagination-generated trains and recounts his experiences with culturally insightful anecdotes. Conscientious civil servants in Punjab, the thick Bulgarian sausages debacle, ice generated sleeping cars, displaced imperialistic cultures, self-righteous gajin, eternal Siberian darkness and 392 pages of other adventures left my thumbed copy looking like it felt—sun faded pages dripping with dampness after being cooked in wine and miles.
Which is why, towards the end of the book, the reader feels much like Theroux and many a six year old—can we go home now? This is when the integrity of the book becomes clear. The idiosyncratic and eclectic stories are not the underlying feature of the book, but rather the traveler’s spirit. And after 28,000 miles in four months away from family and familiarity, the traveler and, by the good graces of talented writing, the reader are simply worn down and undone. I’m not sure who was more glad to be done, me or Theroux. But then again, a trip that ends with you thinking fondly of home, is usually the best kind of trip of all.
Kevlar, goulashes, water, sunglasses and an infinite supply of patience. All the necessary gear for attending and surviving the 2008 National Book Festival. Rumor has it the Woodstock for Bibliophiles, Part Ocho, featured 70 authors and drew over 120,000 to the intermittently rain soaked Mall this past Saturday and put the security team for Laura and Jenna Bush into heart failure.
I, of course, passed up the Bush family fun for a half-smoked hot dog and coke on Independence before bracing myself to face the moldy smelling masses to hear Salman Rushdie in an overwhelmed Fiction and Mystery tent. (Fatwa = Kevlar). My interest lasted five minutes, which is about how long it took this master of modern literature with his expansive knowledge of five languages to digress into a political commentary. I took a pass, and did a providential about face to march into the History and Biography tent to encounter my unexpectedly favorite speaker of the day, Kimberly Dozier.
Dozier, who spent 2003 to 2006 as a war correspondent in Iraq, poignantly shared her personal experience of surviving a militant ambush in 2006 in Iraq that wiped out her entire crew and has left her at the mercy of the good graces of the Bethesda naval hospital staff for the past two years. Her book, Breathing Fire, “is not for or against the war, but about the people who put the wounded, including myself, back together.” She spoke of her colleague, Paul, that had told her “don’t risk my life unless we’re going to make air,” her long road to recovery and the passion of the airmen, doctors and nurses that invested their lives into making the injured’s better. It was beautiful, poetic, and tragic. Her empowering story was devoid of political statements and full of personal hope and enthusiasm for the relentless efforts of those injured in the war.
After that, it was a claustrophobia-inducing walk through the packed book sales tent, jostling efforts to hear the remaining speakers, and the jaw dropping lines for book signings. You would have thought they were selling the eighth installment of Harry Potter, not just offering up authors’ signatures. I was so overwhelmed that I forsook the masses for sanity and went home. Unlike the previous year’s note worthy experience, this one left me disenchanted with the surging masses. Where are the clandestined days of 30,000 attendees? Apparently stuck in 2001, when the first book festival was held. Now it seems everybody’s doing it, which, as my mother once told me, “is a sure fire reason why you shouldn’t be Sarah.” I hate to admit it, but she might be right.
Regardless, more generous logophiles claim that standing in packed tents permeated by muggy humidity was worth it to hear first hand that Kay Ryan, the community college professor turned U.S. Poet Laureate, figured out she was a writer on a cross-country biking trip somewhere in the Rockies (see “Savvy Verse & Wit” here), and that Phillipa Gregory, author of The Other Boleyn Girl, is historically endearing (read the Literate Housewife’s encounter). Bless them for it.
For other survivors of the 2008 National Book Festival, read on here:
If you have to take sides with the animals
Won’t you do it with one who is kind
Ever heard someone sing tears and then talk laughter? That would be Rachael Yamagata performing liquid melodies at the Birchmere last night while celebrating she and her twin brother’s 30th birthday party. Her emotionally visceral lyrics were fabulously juxtaposed against her running monologue that included shout outs to her father—“Dad, couldn’t you get here on time for your daughter’s show”—and self-effacing admissions that in her adolescence she brooded to Michael Bolton while journaling about whether she would ever have a boyfriend.
Who admits that?
She does and then noted, “and now I’ve turned it into a career…well, not the Michael Bolton part.” Fellow DC blogger, Club D, wrote that “singer/songwriter, pianist, and guitarist Rachael Yamagata joked that half the people at the Birchmere last night were either related to her or worked for her family. Wherever they emerged from, hundreds of fans flocked to this sold-out show. In the spring, Yamagata played there on a co-bill with Landon Pigg and, only drew a fraction of the crowd.” It looks like others are cluing into the lyrical poet with a sultry voice and magical understanding. With her new dual disc album Elephants and Teeth Sinking Into Heart coming out October 7, I can only selfishly hope that she doesn’t change with her inevitable fortune and fame that even has the attention of Rolling Stone here. After all, it takes a gritty but wise and real human begin to say,
So for those of you falling in love keep it kind
Keep it good
Keep it right
Throw yourself in the midst of danger but keep one eye open at night
Today was the first time in twenty years I have watched my father get ready. I was reading Steinbeck in a musty hotel chair in Monterey when he walked out of the hotel bathroom clad in a white t-shirt and olive slacks. Both were pressed. He pulled up his pants, strung his black belt, rubbed his face and started shaving before he noticed I was watching.
“So?” he asked.
I just smiled back at him. We were hiding in the hotel from the bride, the flowers, the family, and, most importantly, the inevitable. We called him the groom for short.
There was nothing else to say, so he went back to being himself. I wasn’t surprised to see it was the exact same as when I was eight. He methodically shaved twice, thoroughly brushed his teeth once, and viciously combed his hair. When he was done, he put on his starched shirt with a little boy grin, wryly observing, “it’s a big day. I get to wear two pressed shirts.” One was for the family luncheon, the second one was for the wedding. I laughed at him. He had a bounce in his step and a twinkle in his eyes. He buttoned the shirt from the top down and tucked it in with military precision, leaving four buttons showing and absolutely no creases anywhere except around his eyes.
“Think today is a two or three handkerchief day?” he asked as he fit his wallet, comb and chapstick into his pockets.
“Three,” I answered.
He nodded and folded three fresh, white hankies into his back pocket. You couldn’t even tell they were there. After five minutes of looking for his pocket knife and mumbling about where Rachel put it, he gave up and sat down next to me to pull on his black shoes. He smelled like soap and time.
“You know, I wonder if these were the shoes that I got married in,” he said happy at the memory as he laced the left one up.
“Surely you haven’t had them all this time?”
“Oh, I only wear them on Sundays. I’ve had them resoled three times. Why not?”
And then we left for the luncheon, for the dressing, for the wedding and then for whatever comes after a daughter and sibling is married off. But I remember how he got ready, and for some reason, it meant everything to me.
I suspect it has something to do with knowing that the more things change, the more our fathers remain our fathers.
Author’s Note: My little sister is embarking on an adolescent riot of passage this fall—high school. There are only two things I can think to bestow on her that will be of any substantive value for her social and educational enlightenment—a can of mace and The List.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee A Separate Peace by John Knowles Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy Crime and Punishment by Fydor Dystovesky Animal Farm by George Orwell Once and Future King by T.H. White The Jungle by Sinclair Lewis The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger Old School by Tobias Wolf Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas
The Trilogy—Night, Dawn, Accident by Elie Wiesel As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller A River Runs Through It by Norman MacLean And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen Dracula by Bram Stoker Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stephenson Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Marquez Last of the Mohicans by James Fennimore Cooper Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf The Prince by Machiavelli The Plague by Albert Camus Return of the Soldiers by Rebecca West Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe Metamorphis by Franz Kafka The Rector of Justin by Louis Auchincloss
*Yes, I know, I left out a world of geniuses. “Write to your audience,” and believe me, my little sister is not ready for Kerouac, Vonnegut, Rilke and such. They will be included on the college list posted next week. Let me know what suggestions you have.
Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll Baskerville Hounds by Sir Author Conan Doyle Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain Brave New World by Aldous Huxley The Giver by Lois Lowry Lord of the Flies by William Golding Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne The Caye by I-cannot-remember-to-save-my-life The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien Little Women by Louisa May Alcott Emma by Jane Austen Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis Dairy of Anne Frank by Anne Frank Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway Old Yeller by Fred Gipson Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane Invisible Man by H.G. Wells Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbit Frankenstein by Mary Shelley Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
As many Nancy Drew and Hard Boys as one can consume
Hear ye, hear ye, this is the requested junior high book list. Never fear, a high school and college list featuring your debaucherous favorites to follow. (My morals forbid me from feeding Lawrence and Kerouac to junior high students no matter how much they dress like Britney Spears.) The Great American Novel compilation is already up here. As it has been a good many years since I suffered the indignity and the agony of junior high, please let me know what suggestions you may have that are age appropriate. This list will be arbitrarily and capriciously updated.
Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper The Scarlet Letter, Nathanial Hawthorne Moby Dick, Herman Melville Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner U.S.A. trilogy, John Dos Passos All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway Slaughter-House Five, Kurt Vonnegut Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell The Catcher and the Rye, J.D. Salinger On the Road, Jack Kerouac
The Great American Novel. What is it exactly? “The ‘Great American Novel’ is the concept of a novel that most perfectly represents the spirit of life in the United States at the time of its publication. It is presumed to be written by an American author who is knowledgeable about the state, culture, and perspective of the common American citizen. It is often considered as the American response to the tradition of the national epic.” Thus saith the English speaking world’s online collective knowledge, also known as Wikipedia, who provided the above list.
Others have included Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, Crane’s Red Badge of Courage, Lewis’s The Jungle, Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Walden’s Thoreau. While I grant that while under the Wiki definition the last three are a stretch, the world is a smaller place without Lewis’s culturally necessary crusading and Lee’s world in the eyes of a child.
Some times, when writing, I need to be reminded to see the world from underneath the words, not just looking down into them. This usually results in me having to look outside my atrophied left brain for inspiration. Chase Jarvis was this week’s discovery and effort to see our complicated world as someone who sees things, not just describes them. And, yes, Jarvis is probably not a “find” like young Peter Westermann given that Jarvis ”is the youngest photographer to be named both a Hasselblad Master and a Nikon Master.” Check him out here. Regardless, this self-described “anti-hero” who claims a frantic travel with pictures and blog to match is worth noting.
“I don’t want to be a God-fearing man. I believe in religion without fear.”
Despite not being a rabid NPR fan, this opening line has me hooked on NPR’s This I Believe, one of the most downloaded podcasts in America. I know, I know, no one needs another podcast or media related addiction. At the risk of sounding hopelessly cliche, I can only tell you that this is something…brace yourself…different.
According to the website, This I Believe is an international project engaging people in writing, sharing, and discussing the core values that guide their daily lives. These short statements of belief, written by people from all walks of life, are archived here and featured on public radio in the United States and Canada, as well as in regular broadcasts on NPR. Paul Thorn’s personal story of faith, which is painfully understandable, continues below.
I grew up in a Pentecostal-type faith in northeast Mississippi called the Church of God of Prophecy where my father was the pastor. At the age of 12, I was sent to a summer Bible camp where fear was the motivation for belief. One night the counselors staged a Russian takeover of the camp, simulating the assassination of our camp director. Real shotgun blasts scared us all to our knees where we begged God for salvation.
At the age of 17, I was dis-fellowshipped from my church for having premarital sex with my girlfriend. Since my father was the pastor, a meeting was arranged between me, my dad and my Sunday school teacher. I was given two options: stand and confess my sins in front of the congregation and be forgiven, or continue my evil ways and no longer be in the club. I chose to be dis-fellowshipped and became officially unaffiliated with the church…
A $6,000 used trailer and a boxing career later, Paul’s life gets better. (For the rest of Paul’s story, go here.) Not all the 50,000 essayists posted on This I Believe are so lucky, but the compilation of the stories comprises a richly woven fabric of faith based stories styled in the shapes and sizes of the authors rather than the requirements and mandates of their associated religions. And that is refreshingly beautiful.
Sarah E. Moffett is a twenty-eight year old attorney working for a Washington D.C. area law firm who calls herself an author moonlighting as a lawyer for 2000 billable hours a year. Her first book, Growing Up Moffett, was released by Faithwalk Publishing in April of 2007.
Get the Book
Growing up Moffett: The Rise and Fall of Innocence in a Pathos Plagued Year Available at Amazon.com.
Four faded, tattered, ink stained notebooks covered four months, 28,000 miles, and the better part of every train stop from London to Tokyo and back again by way of vodka laced Siberia. By the time I put down the resulting compilation of those notebooks, Paul Theroux’s The Great Railway Bazaar, I felt like I had come and gone again past the point of traveling return.
