MANCHáN MAGANon the art of travel writing
MAGAN'S WORLD:THIS WEEKEND is the armchair traveller's Superbowl, our Kumbh Mela, our Eucharistic Congress. Each year, a call arises from deep within us to congregate in the fairytale town of Lismore, to pay homage to our heroes, the pantheon of travel writing deities that the Immrama Festival of Travel Writing manages to bring together. In the past, we've got to meet: Nick Danziger, Redmond O'Hanlon, Tim Butcher, Michael Palin, Rory MacLean, Christina Lamb. But this year they have surpassed themselves. As you read this my brain will still be buzzing from the thrill of receiving benediction from the great philosopher/travel writer, Pico Iyer, at Lismore Courthouse Theatre last night. Later today, anyone lucky enough to have a ticket can hear Sir Ranulph Fiennes address us in the gym hall of the local school, and tonight there's an audience with Tim Severin. Tomorrow, the uncrowned queen of travel writing, Jan Morris, will read in the sumptuous surroundings of Fort William House. To those of us who dare follow in her footsteps, the subtly and incisiveness of her prose acts as both carrot and stick.
The people of Lismore were blessed with an early introduction to good travel writing from their most famous citizen, Dervla Murphy, and as a result appreciate the literary form more than most. They’ve learnt that travel writers are invariably better yarn spinners than most writers. The open road hones one’s inner seanchaí. Any group of travellers around an open fire or gathered in some seedy flophouse will invariably start telling tales, and unless you can hold your own, you’re soon eclipsed. We’ve all started out being the quiet dull one sitting on our bunk alone, and worked our way up through the ranks, so that we can hold a room or even a campsite of weary wanderers under our spell; keeping them with us even as they pick away at their blisters, mend their rucksacks and slurp noodles from battered pots. It makes facing an audience in a darkened hall simple by comparison.
Festival directors should take more note of this. A travel writer will almost always be more engaging than a novelist. This year’s West Cork Literary Festival is a good place to test the assertion; alongside a rake of distinguished authors, it features Tim Mackintosh-Smith, one of the truly mythical heroes of travel writing. The story goes that, against the advice of his Arabic tutor at Oxford, Mackintosh-Smith went off to Yemen in 1982, and has been there ever since, living in the ancient fortified city of Sana’a, in a five-story tilting mud building that looks like a haphazardly iced gingerbread house. A latter-day Lawrence of Arabia, he has gone “native”, they say, becoming reliant on qat, a plant chewed for its sedative effects. He likens its effect on him to Dumbledore’s magic bowl in Harry Potter. Rumour has it that he spends his days reading the world’s literature and chatting to wizened old Yemenis in sun-dried palazzos and hidden walled gardens.
The world would have forgotten him by now, except that every few years he embarks on an expedition in the footsteps of the 14th-century Arab traveller, Ibn Battutah, and publishes a work based on his journey. Travels with a Tangerineand The Hall of a Thousand Columnsfocus on different parts of his recreation of Battutah's journey, which in total covers 75,000 miles, from Morocco to China, via Istanbul and India.
If you do get to the festival, remember to compare Mackintosh-Smith’s rugged tales with the sterile, self-analysis of the novelists; and make sure you get him to tell you about eating fricasseed bulls’ rectums, or finding scorpions in his qat bag, or how the Arabic word qarurah can mean either the apple of one’s eye or a urinal, depending on the circumstances. Now what novelist will answer questions like those?
- lismoreimmrama.com, westcorkliteraryfestival.ie