MANCHÁN MAGAN'stales of a travel addict
AS YET ANOTHER Lismore travel writing festival approaches, travel literature still suffers the indignity of being one of the most maligned genres, forever having to convince people that there is more to it than fluffy, hyperbolic holiday accounts. Devotees will yet again gather in the idyllically-preserved town, hoping that a new young genius might come along to steal Dervla Murphy’s crown and bring the form to new heights.
We travel writers carry the same cross as naturists, having to assure people their habit is not about sex. Our genre is not just about selling cruises and fly-drive holidays.
Last year, the festival received a visitation from an elite coterie of the Irish theatre world who stumbled upon us en route to their own annual shindig, the Theatre Forum Conference. With their finely honed critical capacity and perspicacious eye, they studied us with anthropological exactness, questioning our performance style and why travel writers don’t tend to read from their own work but tell anecdotes instead – is it a lack of confidence in our prose? They also queried the general tendency within the genre for well-educated westerners to report patronisingly on the vagaries of developing countries. Is the situation ever reversed? Do brown- or black-skinned travellers write about journeying through the amusing foibles of white western culture? These questions were a bit too close to the bone and so we ostracised the thespians, urging them on their way to their board-treading conference.
This year, to my shame, I am abandoning the Lismore festival, having been lured away by a more fashionable literary genre: history. The inaugural History Festival of Ireland is being held on the same weekend (June 8th-10th) in Lisnavagh House, Carlow. Considering how in vogue history is at present, it is no surprise the festival has managed to attract an enviable list of speakers: Myles Dungan, Kevin Myers, Diarmaid Ferriter, David Norris, Robert O’Byrne and Ruth Dudley Edwards.
Everyone is obsessed with history these days – finding speakers must have been like forking sausages in toad-in-the-hole. What is so attractive about this fanatical tendency to look backwards, while travel writers who dare look sideways, beyond their own culture, are ignored?
At the history festival I shall be proudly debating a motion in defence of the Government’s decision to remove compulsory history from the junior curriculum. In my world it would be replaced by a semester of travel literature – the benefits of which will be obvious to anyone fortunate enough to attend Lismore Courthouse on Friday, June 8th, where Colin Thubron, Jan Morris and Tony Wheeler will be discussing The Legacy and Influence of Patrick Leigh Fermor on Travel Writing. Leigh Fermor has contributed more to my understanding of the Caribbean and pre-second World War Europe than any history book. He was the notorious gossip of international travel, whose charm, as the Telegraph’s obituarist noted last June, “led to his being passed from schloss to schloss by a network of margraves and voivodes”. The BBC described him as a cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond and Graham Greene. As it happens, he was a regular visitor to Lismore, being a close friend of the Duchess of Devonshire at Lismore Castle. I would urge you to read their book of gossipy letters – but you must first read his greatest works, A Time of Gifts and The Traveller’s Tree.
Lest I be accused by Lismore pilgrims of abandoning travel literature, I assure you that at Listowel Writers’ Week I’ll be flying the travel flag with the venerable traveller Mary Russell. The illustrious festival of high literature has deigned to allow a forum on travel writing and, while it’s mere crumbs from their table, once we get our foot in the door we’re not leaving.
[ thehistoryfestivalofireland.com ]
[ writersweek.ie ]