Destination: Pennsylvania

Book: An American Childhood (1987) by Annie Dillard

“I grew up in Pittsburgh in the 1950′s in a house full of comedians, reading books.” Annie Dillard.

Whatever you think of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, Annie Dillard will give you a different view in [amazonify]B001UE71JS::text:::: An American Childhood [/amazonify]. When you close this book, you will want to travel to Pittsburgh.

Our road trip heads south from our last stop in Buffalo, New York. Although Pittsburgh is on the “far edge of the Mid West,” as Dillard says, Pennsylvania reaches to the sea and qualifies as a mid-Atlantic state.

Now we are in Pittsburgh with Annie Dillard in her literary journey through An American Childhood in the 1950′s. I read her better-known, Pulitzer-winning [amazonify]0060920645::text::::Pilgrim at Tinker Creek[/amazonify], soon after it was published in 1974. (The Amazon link here leads you to one volume with both of these books, plus The Writer’s Life. Sounds like a very good deal, to me.) Pilgrim is deep and wise and I pictured its author as an older woman.  In fact, she was not quite thirty. That book shows her fascination with Thoreau. Emerson also influenced her theological thoughts.

In Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek, Dillard  says she is not a scientist, but she observes and tests the world with a scientists’ focus and curiosity in An American Childhood. The writer’s microscopic exploration of the world of a child had me nodding in recognition.

“The great outer world dove into view and began to fill with things that had apparently been there all along: mineralogy, detective work, lepidopterology, ponds and streams, flying, society.”

When she is curious about butterflies and moths, amoeba, the Panama Canal, or minerals, she heads for the big library built by one of Pittsburgh’s early millionaires, Andrew Carnegie, where she also takes art lessons.

In church she finds the only serious discussion of complex ideas and for a long time that is the only source of philosophy she knows.

She wanders about creating mind maps of Pittsburgh.  Annie Dillard’s Pittsburgh exists in the upper class and country club/private school life. But as we watch her growing up and out into any ever enlarging world, we also learn about the history of Pittsburgh, its famous residents and how its various neighborhoods looked in the 1950′s.

I not only loved the child, I loved her mother.  Intelligent, witty, cracking jokes, playing with language, she reminded me of my father.  And her disdain for misuse reminded me of my own mother who hated to hear “Where’s it at?” and would always answer “Behind the bat,” because only nonsense should answer an ungrammatical construction. Annie’s mother resisted the Pittsburgh inclination to mix leave with let. The chapter on her mother’s penchant for finding jokes everywhere totally cracked me up. Her language play never stopped.

“She regarded the instructions on bureaucratic forms as straight lines.  ‘Do you advocate the overthrow of the United States government by force or violence?’ After some thought she wrote, “Force.”*

When Dillard got to her teen angst years, I found the book too dense and tedious.  But travelers should stick with it for the Epilogue, with a striking picture of America as the home of wanderers. Life on the Mississippi (link leads to the entire text on line) by Mark Twain and On the Road (link leads to Google excerpts of “original scroll” edition) by Jack Kerouac were books read and re-read in her household.

Scurry down to your bookstore, or click on my Amazon link above and get An American Childhood. You’ll be glad you did.

*For younger readers who can’t believe this nonsense, it was quite true in the Cold War, commie-fearing fiftes. I nearly refused to sign an oath of loyalty to the government as a matter of principal when I was a student at Ohio State, but gave up because I need the scholarship money at stake.

For music to go with the Road Trip to Pennsylvania, see Music Road, where you’ll find a song called–what else?–Pennsylvania. Music Road has partnered with A Traveler’s Library for the Great American Road Trip so you will have a treats to hear as well as to read.

The photograph above was used through the Creative Commons license, and found at Flickr. For more info about the photographer, click on the picture.

Anyone want to share what they know about Pittsburgh?  Dillard wanted, as a child, to remember everything. Her book shows that she surely remembered a lot. Have you ever tried to remember exact scenes from your life? How did it go?

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Destination: England

Book: Lady Vernon and her Daughter, by Jane Rubino and Caitlen Rubino-Bradway

Today we will be lured to England, with the reminder that today is the birthday of Miss Jane Austen.

What would Jane think? say? do? has much occupied the minds of a mother and daughter, who, when not searching for the perfect husband (comely, wealthy, and amusing) for the latter, have been enlarging upon a short piece of fiction left unfinished by Miss Austen.

They base the faux Jane Austen novel,Lady Vernon and Her Daughter: A Novel of Jane Austen’s Lady Susan, on a short and rather unsatisfactory novel by Austen called Lady Susan.

Jane Rubino has written a series of mysteries set in New Jersey and also fleshed out a Sherlock Holmes collection of tales merely mentioned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in Knight Errant. So I began by asking if her idea of riffing on Jane Austen came from her experience with duplicating Conan Doyle’s style.

Authors Jane Rubino and Her Daughter, Caitlen

Jane: No. It really came out of the mystery series set in New Jesey. Austen is  the last name of my detective—a rabid Austen fanatic—and she has a daughter named Jane Austen.

I was going to write historical fiction using the characters in the story (Lady Susan).  I invited Cait and we talked about it together and started to write a few chapters. But then we thought we wouldn’t do justice to it to do it as history. We then started writing in the style of Austen. It started more as a historical mystery. (They originally focused on the suspicious death of Susan’s husband, but eventually downplayed that.)

ATL:  When did you start reading her novels?

Caitlen: Actually, a little too young to appreciate it. I really got into it in college. I took an intensive Austen seminar. (But) I first read Pride and Prejudice when I was 10 or 11. You don’t appreciate the nuance at that age, but I was reading way above my level.

ATL: Do the characters resemble your mother- daughter relationship in any way?

Caitlen: I think they do in that we get along, and I was shy when I was younger.

Jane: Every mother does have the anxiety about finding the right husband to live up to their standards. In the original she (Lady Susan Vernon) is not very maternal (very cool). We adapted the story and brought it more into Jane Austen’s genre. The focus is on the need to marry well.

ATL: The original is totally composed of letters. Your novel contains letters, but is a standard novel. Did you use the letters ‘as is’ from Lady Susan in Lady Vernon and Her Daughter?

Jane:  We used some letters as is. We used some where we changed the writer. For instance I remember we changed from Lady Susan to Eliza.

Caitlen: We switched from letters sometimes.  When we couldn’t use them as letters, we changed the lines to dialogue or exposition.

ATL: What  literature might have ever  inspired you to travel?

Jane: To be frank, I do not have a passport. I have traveled to the Caribbean and to Canada and across the country—it is a beautiful country. I love South Florida, the Carolinas, and coastal Georgia. When I saw (the movie) “Enchanted in April,” it made me want to see (Italy) in person, but I was almost afraid to go because it wouldn’t be as beautiful (as it was in the movie).

Caitlen: I read Austen or Bronte and I think I would love to go to England. I like to read food and wine books. Bacchus and Me: Wine country in Oregon.

We parted company at this point and I retired to the library to read Lady Vernon and Her Daughter, (which was sent to me by the publisher for review). I can highly recommend it to the lover of Austen and to the traveler to England. The writing is worthy of Jane Austen, with sly humor on every page and as many quotable lines as Miss Austen herself might have penned. And as a side light, their web site is equally amusing, Janetility.

You can see a wonderful book trailer for Lady Vernon and her Daughter at Amazon.

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Paris Movie Walks by Michael Schurmann

Destination: Paris

Book: Paris Movie Walks: Ten Guided Tours Through The City of Lights! Camera! Action!, by Michael Schurmann

I was going to say “You don’t have to be a movie fan to enjoy this book.”  But who among us is NOT a movie fan? And who has seen a movie set in Paris and NOT wanted to glide right over the Seine?

It might have been the breathtaking chases of the Bourne Identity. Or perhaps you swayed to Gene Kelly’s dancing in American in Paris.  Or romance, ahh, romance, with Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton in Somethings Got to Give (2004) or Keven Kline and Meg Ryan in French Kiss (1995) And the camera made love to Audrey Hepburn in many Paris films and I not only wanted to BE Audrey Hepburn, but I wanted to be Audrey Hepburn IN PARIS.

I can not list all of the movies made in Paris, and even Michael Schurmann, himself an American in Paris, does not try to list every movie ever made in this popular location. There are too many.  But Schurmann’s book Paris Movie Walks give you ten ambles through neighborhoods, and each route crosses paths with several movies.

The tours cover much more than just ‘this chase scene took place on this street,’ or ‘this kiss on this bridge.’  Schurmann packs the book with value added.  Although he promises “there will be no endless lists of French monarchs and their annoying mistresses, no stories about poets and painters about whom you know little and care even less” the book does include some references to history and the usual ‘Hemingway slept here’ kind of information. Inclusion of plenty of information beyond movie sets makes the book useful to more people and makes it more useful to all readers.

The book includes

• Tips on dining in Paris without going bankrupt. (Maxims charges €35 for a mousse au chocolat.)
• How to adapt to French culture
• A list of movies with Eiffel Tower shots. (Every apartment in a movie set in Paris has a view of the Eiffel Tower, he says.)
• The evolution of the use of locations rather than studio sets, with an aside on American in Paris. (Did they or didn’t they?)
• The student riots of the 1960s.
• Movies with scenes in or outside the Louvre.
• The best view (and most photographed view in movies) in Paris.

I love this book.

1. I love the useful index that shows which of the walks show scenes from which movies.
2. I love that each walk starts and ends at a metro stop and a metro map is included.
3. I love the list of movies to see before you go.
4. I love the depth of research that went in to the book.

I would love it even more if the maps of each walk showed where the stops are, if the photographs had captions, and if there were not quite so many French language movies included which are unfamiliar to me. Sigh! I guess I’d better spend more time at the Loft Theater, Tucson’s foreign and indie film house.

But on balance, this is a valuable book for the movie lover traveling to Paris, or even the person who just wants to find interesting walks in the city of Lights! without the camera!action!

So I am off to put Amelie on my Netflix queue. I did see it when it came out, but have forgotten much about the Paris background.  And how about you?  Do you have a favorite Paris film? Please recommend it here.  And if you think others would like this book, please share with the share buttons below.

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Cathie Ryan, Irish singer, Photograph by Kerry Dexter

Destination: Ireland

Music: The Farthest Wave (Cathie Ryan)

Here is the second post by Kerry Dexter of Music Road. This time she talks about a recording that introduces you to Ireland.

Music for Ireland

Contemporary Ireland is a country of connection and intersection. History, myth, and legend live as part of to the present in both landscape and people. It’s also a completely twenty first century country, whose people laugh and grieve, enjoy family and face uncertainty, as their ancestors have and as people in the rest of the world do.

Singer and songwriter Cathie Ryan walks those intersections  in her recording The Farthest Wave.[Note: you can listen or buy from Amazon by following the link] There’s Dance the Baby, a lively set of slip jigs in Irish which Ryan’s grandfather used to sing while playing with Ryan and her brother and sister when they were small, and there’s Peata Beag do Mhathar, a loving and lively song between mother and child.

Cathie Ryan, Photograph by Kerry Dexter

Ryan’s own What’s Closest to the Heart is a swirling, sensuous dance of  quite another sort, an enigmatic invitation and reassurance framed in both Irish and English. Rough and Rocky is an American song which remains, in Ryan’s hands, both American and Irish in its reflection on  choices, journeys, and leaving loved ones behind

The Wild Flowers is a powerful and graceful song “for anyone who’s ever felt cast out of the garden,” Ryan says. It was written by contemporary Irish musician, John Spillane, and while his version is full of grit and hard knocks, Ryan sees that same determination as a flame of resilience and hope.

What Will You Do Love? a duet between Ryan and top Irish singer Sean Keane, is a traditional ballad of tests and persistence in love, framed in two voices whose connection is a thoughtful conversation.

The title track, The Farthest Wave, is a journey from grief to understanding to  the possibility of healing, framed in images of the natural world and touched by legend. It is also one Ryan wrote.

Ryan is a singer whose power and grace lies in restraint,  and a deep understanding of the words she sings, whether her own or others, whether in English or Irish. She’s been praised for her voice, and deservedly so. She’s also a writer and poet of vision, whose work is both contemporary and timeless.

——————-

Photograph by Kerry Dexter, All rights reserved.

A Traveler’s Library wholeheartedly thanks Kerry Dexter for these two music posts–taking us to Scotland and Ireland in song. For more, see Kerry’s interview with Cathie Ryan at Music Road.

I hope you have enjoyed the two posts by Kerry Dexter about music for the traveler.  If you would like to have more posts about music and travel, please let me know in the comments section.  I always appreciate suggestions of books, movies, and music and people who might share their expertise here. See you around the Web, Kerry. VMB

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This is so cool, that I am devoting a whole day’s post to it:

http://amaztype.tha.jp/

Whether you think the “amaz” stands for Amazon or amazing–you are correct.

Now, just because you have this toy to find books, don’t desert A Traveler’s Library. Please.

And this may be a good time to remind you to subscribe to A Traveler’s Library by RSS Feed or E-mail. Please.

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Books: The Bible; From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Freidman; Exodus by Leon Uris

Whether your interest runs to history or contemporary geo-politics, Roman ruins or Medieval times, when you travel to Israel, you will find a country that is exasperating, beautiful, inspiring, welcoming and off-putting all at the same time.

Jerusalem Market photgraph by David King

Conflict between “tribes” did not start with the founding of the modern state of Israel. The region has been embroiled in struggles since time began. The book that captures the modern conflicts best is Thomas Freidman in From Beirut to Jerusalem.  Before his father-knows-best sermons on everything from ecology to world banking made him a best selling author and popular columnist, Friedman was a hard-working journalist who tried to find the truth behind the middle-East conflicts by visiting with a wide variety of people and telling their stories. He delves into the American contribution to the Israeli state and shows that it is not always benign.

As the center of three major religions, Israel has drawn pilgrims for a thousand years. The once mighty Jordan may have shriveled to a mere stream because of siphoning off for farming, but place names like Bethlehem and Jericho took me right back to Sunday School lessons in the little white church in Ohio where I grew up. Unfortunately, I did not have a copy of The Book, the Bible, with me. When I got home I pored over maps and archaeology of the Bible from my father’s library. I used a very old out of print book, but there is a newer one available, on archaeological study of the Bible.

Finally, the birth of the modern state of Israel comes vividly to life in Exodus by Leon Uris, and sheds light on today’s struggles. Since it is now out of print, you can try Amazon or American Book Exchange for a used copy. The movie version starring Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint may be available on Netflix.

Have you been to Israel? What books or movies did you find useful? I would particularly like to have your recommendations for more Bible-related books. My Bible is the Christian one, but I welcome suggestions for religious books that enhance the travel experience for Jews and Muslims as well.

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©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Joseph Wood Krutch garden at U of A during Book Festival

Rolf Potts and Tom Miller talked about travel writing to a lecture theater packed with Tucsonans last weekend at the Tucson Festival of Books. The secret of success, they said, may be over a volleyball net.

When traveler and writer Rolf Potts describes his career arc, it is enough to make other travel writers at least roll their eyes, if not go somewhere quiet and lie down until the nausea passes. Talented, yes, but more boldly adventurous and self assured than the bookish crew writers usually are, he got his start by selling an article to Salon. For those of you who are principally readers rather than writers–let me explain. That’s a sale that most travel writers spend years aspiring to.

The secret to his success? After this auspicuous beginning, he put himself in interesting places, practiced persistence, worked hard, and  persuaded Salon to assign him a regular column and from that point on major magazines like Esquire, New York Times Magazine and National Geographic Traveler came calling. Nowadays, it may not be unlawful to publish a “Best of” book about travel writing withouth Potts, but it is highly unlikely.

Potts teaches travel writing in Paris (more rolled eyes and murmers of “tough life”) and says the main message is that it is what you throw out, more than what you decide to use, that makes a good story.  That, and developing the knack of selecting the telling detail of a culture, build a riveting tale. His first book, Vagabonding is a how-to book for taking off from “normal” life and traveling around the world wherever whim takes you. He describes his work as “postmodern” in the opening of his latest book, Marco Polo Didn’t Go There tacks meta endnotes–a postmodern term if there ever was one–on each chapter to tell us behind the scene information about what was left out and why or to further explain what was left in.

He  observes  that he looks for the intersection between the news (mostly bad stuff) and traditional travel writing (mostly romanticized stuff). He wants to describe the texture of life between these two polls. Being open to participating in the life around you helps. Once in Thailand, some villagers invited him to join a volleyball game–not out of diplomacy or , but because he was by far the tallest person in the region. His hosts quickly became disheartened when they learned that he could not play a good game of volleyball, despite being tall and blond.

Rolf Potts was speaking in a session along with Tucson resident Tom Miller, no slouch himself at landing good writing contracts.  But the irony is that Miller discussed the time in South America when his car was stopped and he was invited to join a volleyball game. At one point the game stopped, one of the team members pulled over a car on the highway, extracted a bribe, came back and resumed the game. We will talk about Miller and his Southwest and Mexico travels soon, focusing on  Jack Ruby’s Kitchen Sink, which I am currently reading.

Now I know why I am not a famous travel writer. I am not tall, and no one ever invited me to play volleyball in a third-world country.

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Flashlight Worthy Books‘ founders Peter and Eric debate the worth of Kindle with solid arguments on both sides.

Christian Science Monitor rounds up a bunch of reviews in an article on the launch of Kindle II. If you read down in the comments, you will see a link to a very thorough well rounded review.

Then there’s the inevitable funny, personal and negative blogger’s take.

Before there was Kindle (and its lesser cousins), the hand-held electronic book collection, you could download books from the Internet to your computer, or to your PDA, or, of late, to your cell phone.  From their computer, some people prefer to print them off, while others read directly from the computer screen.  Either way, sources for books on the Internet proliferate.

You can download classics from the original source of e-free books,  Project Gutenberg. Because all their books are out of copyright, they are generally more than 80 years old. You can also volunteer to help them enlarge their library.  The organization of books seems rather strange to me. If you are looking for books that shed light on travel, go beyond the bookshelf called Travel and look at some of the country shelves, at Pirates, Buccaneers and Corsairs Shelf, and at shelves like Art or Archaeology. Don’t forget Women’s Travel, which for some reason is segregated from Travel.

Find strictly classics, (including one I recently downloaded and have on my TBR list, Down and Out in London by George Orwell) at Planet E-Book. A drawback here is that you do not get any information about the edition or translation of books. For instance, I would not mind re-reading the Illiad, but it makes a great deal of difference which translation, and Planet E-Book does not tell me on the web page.

More on alternatives to travel books without paper and ink on the morrow.

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