In Xanadu - A Quest - William Dalrymple
Travel writing is always interesting and entertaining - whether they be 'erudite' books like In Xanadu or blogs of VSOs and Peace Corps volunteers who are saving the world - it is always good to see what people think about a place and the people in it as they pass through. I remember a VSO telling me after I commented on the disparaging remarks about some Guyanese places in their Guyana travel guide.. "the guide was not meant for everyone, only the VSOs.."
Dalrymple is 22 years old when he sets out with the blessing (and some funding?) from his University to follow Marco Polo's trail from the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem to Kubla Khan's Palace in Mongolia. The book covers the journey, places he visited and all the people he meets. It is telling that the thanks he offers at the beginning of the book, include the two women he travelled with, but no gratitude to the wonderful characters he meets along the way who enliven the book.
Dalrymple follows the style of many of the white men writing about non-white people they meet on their adventures and travels and expeditions into unknown places. Everyone else is ugly, stupid or uncivilised in some way.. a lot of places are dirty and drab - some like Scotland - and people are not as nice supposedly as Dalrymple's colleagues back home who he wants to impress with completing the journey.
So, after shifting the block on my shoulder about another of the white man's disparaging view of the world, the book is a good read, hilarious in many parts including the things that the 22 year old has to endure to complete his quest of reaching the ruins of a palace. He finds a lot of people ugly and so on - and a few people he dutifully records, find him so.. and the Mongolian people who take him to the palace ruins apparently say that English people bonkers, very bonkers.
The man has researched various sites and there is some fascinating bits of history and conclusions 'European culture depends a lot on Islamic culture' . Some of the historical bits are long winded if you are not too interested in who killed who and enslaved who thousands of years ago, but the fascination with history ends somewhere in the past and Dalyrmple is unconcerned about the people who survive in the present . There are lots of quotes and bibliography.
His passing references to the colonial history are tender - he credits the memsahibs surviving in the out of way places more than say he does the present day Ughurs surviving in places where he wants to escape from. One of his ancestors had a wonderful cremation at sea exploding out of a barrel of rum or something like that, instead of a planned burial.
One wonders if in planning for his journey, whether Dalrymple expected to meet any nice people or people who he would have added to his thank you list at the beginning of the book. But then, many of the Europeans who set out on expeditions and adventures did so assuming that everything unknown was bad. Twenty years after writing in Xanadu , Dalyrmple has moved on.. from this article
Dalrymple is 22 years old when he sets out with the blessing (and some funding?) from his University to follow Marco Polo's trail from the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem to Kubla Khan's Palace in Mongolia. The book covers the journey, places he visited and all the people he meets. It is telling that the thanks he offers at the beginning of the book, include the two women he travelled with, but no gratitude to the wonderful characters he meets along the way who enliven the book.
Dalrymple follows the style of many of the white men writing about non-white people they meet on their adventures and travels and expeditions into unknown places. Everyone else is ugly, stupid or uncivilised in some way.. a lot of places are dirty and drab - some like Scotland - and people are not as nice supposedly as Dalrymple's colleagues back home who he wants to impress with completing the journey.
So, after shifting the block on my shoulder about another of the white man's disparaging view of the world, the book is a good read, hilarious in many parts including the things that the 22 year old has to endure to complete his quest of reaching the ruins of a palace. He finds a lot of people ugly and so on - and a few people he dutifully records, find him so.. and the Mongolian people who take him to the palace ruins apparently say that English people bonkers, very bonkers.
The man has researched various sites and there is some fascinating bits of history and conclusions 'European culture depends a lot on Islamic culture' . Some of the historical bits are long winded if you are not too interested in who killed who and enslaved who thousands of years ago, but the fascination with history ends somewhere in the past and Dalyrmple is unconcerned about the people who survive in the present . There are lots of quotes and bibliography.
His passing references to the colonial history are tender - he credits the memsahibs surviving in the out of way places more than say he does the present day Ughurs surviving in places where he wants to escape from. One of his ancestors had a wonderful cremation at sea exploding out of a barrel of rum or something like that, instead of a planned burial.
One wonders if in planning for his journey, whether Dalrymple expected to meet any nice people or people who he would have added to his thank you list at the beginning of the book. But then, many of the Europeans who set out on expeditions and adventures did so assuming that everything unknown was bad. Twenty years after writing in Xanadu , Dalyrmple has moved on.. from this article
"..When In Xanadu was published at the end of the 80s, travel writing tended to highlight the narrator: his adventures were the subject; the people he met were often reduced to objects in the background. I have tried to invert this, and keep the narrator in the shadows, so bringing the lives of the people I have met to the fore and placing their stories centre stage..."
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