LiteraryTraveler.net

Alain de Botton, photo by אלן דה בוטון

When I began reading Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel, I was a bit taken aback by the author’s frankness. Only five percent of the way through (I was reading it on my Kindle), and already de Botton was spouting seemingly off-the-cuff profundities:

“It seems we may best be able to inhabit a place when we are not faced with the additional challenge of having to be there.”

De Botton comes to this conclusion after describing instances of disappointment and nuisance during a trip to Barbados, and at once the statement struck me as incredibly true and incredibly unnerving. I too had experienced travel disillusionments. In Barcelona, the famous Sagrada Familia cathedral had still been under construction. My weekend in Paris was dreary and cold. Yet, in the end, the experience of traveling, of seeing those places firsthand, was worth the annoyances, wasn’t it?

I had hoped The Art of Travel would serve as inspiration for a collection of travel essays I was working on, but at that point in the text, it seemed de Botton’s words had the potential to dismantle the significance of my project. If it is more enjoyable to simply imagine gorgeous, faraway lands, why even bother traveling at all, let alone writing about it?

As I read on, however, I found that de Botton’s honest prose answers this very question. In one particular instance, he describes the scene beyond his Barbados hotel room in stunning detail:

The beach stretch[es] away in a gentle curve towards the tip of the bay with jungle-covered hills behind, and the first row of coconut trees inclin[es] irregularly towards the turquoise sea, as though some of them were craning their necks to catch a better angle of the sun.

This gorgeous description is typical of de Botton’s work, yet he immediately undermines its beauty, admitting that, in actuality, the scene was colored by a collection of petty anxieties and physical discomforts such as “a sore throat…and a rising need to visit the bathroom.”

Such discomforts are present to some degree in every travel experience, yet travel writers often stifle them to make room for the upbeat and the exotic. However, de Botton shows us that these imperfections are precisely what make travel such an eye-opening experience, one that possesses the incredible ability to teach us about our own flawed nature.  In the end, de Botton’s work did inspire me to face the jarring, the messy, the disconcerting elements of travel and to examine why, in spite of it all, do we continue to leave the comfort of our homes to go explore these faraway places?

I’ve heard critics of the e-reader mention everything from the death of book publishing to the strain on our eyes as their reasons for eschewing this new technology.  They scoff at the tidy little devices, the Kindles with their bland gray screens and the flashy gloss of the iPad.  They aren’t interested in seeing what should be–in their opinions–carefully tucked away behind a mussed-up cover all splayed out on a screen.  Like all Luddites, they cling fruitlessly to their books and magazines, holding out their paper products for all the world to see.  Look, they cry, I still read, as though the very act of reading were somehow compromised by the lack of pages.

You might wonder why I describe the book traditionalists in such specific yet derogatory terms.  This is probably because I still number myself among the masses.  But I am slowly changing.

The change began months ago, when I received a Kindle as a Christmas present.  I did not fall instantly in love.  There were aspects I liked, but the idea of a little square of plastic replacing all my boxes of books?  Well, that just didn’t seem possible.

However, I am beginning to see the beauty of the Kindle, to understand the allure of reading off a screen rather than a page.  With one click, I can buy the book recommended by an overzealous friend.  My Kindle offers instant gratification–not to mention the ability to read whatever I please (I admit I have more than a few literary guilty pleasures), free from the judgment of the subway-riding populace.

Oddly, my Kindle also has brought me closer to strangers.

We tend to believe in the isolating powers of technology, but recently I’ve come to see that new gadgets can be excellent conversation starters.  And I am not alone in this observation.  Yesterday, The New York Times ran an article suggesting that e-readers weren’t a sign of the impending downfall of human interaction, but rather another way to open lines of communication between strangers.  Furthermore, they argue, e-readers are just plain cool:

“I think, historically, there has been a stigma attached to the bookworm, and that actually came from the not-untrue notion that, if you were reading, you weren’t socializing with other people,” Dr. Levinson said. “But the e-reader changes that also because e-readers are intrinsically connected to bigger systems.” For many, e-readers are today’s must-have accessory, eroding old notions of what being bookish might have meant. “Buying literature has become cool again,” he said.

I don’t know whether my Kindle signals to the rest of the universe that I’m a hip, modern bookworm.  But it could scream nerd for all I care.  I’m slowly evolving from book-lover to simply word-lover, and the change feels great.  So, go ahead, ask me about my Kindle.  Just don’t ask me what I’m reading–it might be kind of embarrassing.