The Book Shopper

Two Different Travel Books

This month I have read two travel books, neither of which you would find on the shelf next to your Fodors, Lonely Planets, or Anthony Bourdains. Both books are not your normal travel fanfare.

Norman Lock’s A Boy in His Winter: An American Novel (2014) is an imaginative revisiting of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In Part One (July 2, 1835 to August 29, 2005), the narrator Huck Finn travels down the Mississippi River with his companion the slave Jim, but the two are stuck in a time warp where they don’t age even though the voyage itself lasts for decades. Off the river, time has marched on, as Huck and Jim witness a Civil War battle at Vicksburg, and later meet a veteran of the Great War. Tom Sawyer makes a few cameo appearances along the way but unlike Huck or Jim, Tom grows older.

While Huck and Jim are traveling companions, they are not close friends because of the chasm of race. Jim knows that a black man in the South lives in peril and it is something that the youthful Huck in his ignorance doesn’t understand. In one instance, Huck asks:

“ 'Jim, do you believe in free will?'

'Is there a more ridiculous question to ask a slave?' he said, laughing.

And for a moment I hated him."

In the second part (August, 29, 2005 to September 11, 2005) Huck arrives at the mouth of the river south of New Orleans the same day as hurricane Katrina. His raft is gone (and so is Jim) and he joins a three-man crew of a charter boat who are running drugs from New Orleans up the Atlantic coast during the post-Katrina chaos. Lock is able to capture how a thirteen-year-old boy views the 21st century, who is both innocent yet worldly enough to survive. In Part 3 (September 12, 2005 to March 15, 2077) Huck, since he is no longer tied to the river, is beginning to age and the old Huck reflects more on his young life.  Hence the title A Boy in His Winter.

It's an unusual premise, and I am usually skeptical of derivative works (like sequels, prequels), but Lock who has reimagined several other American classics in his The American Novel series (all with Bellevue Literary Press) writes well taking on a time-traveling Huckleberry Finn adventure.

Remembering Turkey

The other book is Michael Pereira’s Mountains and a Shore: A Journey Through Southern Turkey. Originally published in 1966, Paul Dry Books republished the book in 2015. In this thin travelogue, Pereira combines the history of the country with his solo travels along the southern Mediterranean coastline and Taurus Mountains. Because Pereira speaks Turkish and insists on traveling the way that the locals do: by foot, by donkey if necessary, and the most common mode of transportation— the bus. He writes:

“…the role played by buses is of immense importance, and I came away with nothing but admiration for them and their drivers. For they have to contend with the trains, bridges washed away or simply non-existent, and, by no means the least, other Turkish drivers.

To help them overcome these hazards they very reasonably enlist the help of the Almighty, and in the space above the windscreen is always written some brief prayer or exhortation. Some of these are pious rather than comforting, such as: ‘May God protect you!’ and others, to my mind, needlessly eschatological: ‘Forget not thy God!’… The most popular of all, however, is the single word ‘Maşallah’, which used in much the same way as a Spaniard uses the sign of the cross to avert danger.”

You feel every bump in the road as he travels the mountainous swerving roads often overlooking the Mediterranean. Pereira’s purposely traveled to an area of a country that he believed would be much more developed in the upcoming decades.

His descriptions of the kebabs, and the centuries-old churches and muezzins’ calls to prayers from the minarets reminded me of my trip to Turkey with my partner Denise in 201o. Books like Pereira’s expand what I normally think of as a travel book. Sometimes you read a travel book with a purpose to plan an upcoming trip or to be a companion while traveling, but Mountains and A Shore, provided a respite from our daily routine by reliving memories of our trip to this fascinating country. (I cannot forget our visit to the Hagia Sophia and the pickle shop in Istanbul.)

It is just as Dave Mason wrote in the Forward to Pereira’s book: “All travel is time travel.”

---

Both books are available at the Destination: Books Book Shopper portal. When you purchase an independently book through site, we earn an affiliate commission.

 

Novel Reminders

I am a little sheepish to admit in a book blog that I have spent many winter evenings lately watching television or more specifically, watching movies on television. Denise and I haven’t been to the cinema in over two years (sigh). To fill that void, we have been streaming motion pictures that are receiving critical attention. Most of you have probably heard of or watched The Power of the Dog, Passing, and Being the Ricardos. While watching these offerings I was reminded of passages from related books. Some of these books I read a while ago, which is a credit to the strange selective power of reading and memory.

Larry McMurtry and Jane Campion

Based on a 1967 Tom Savage novel of the same name, Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog is the story of two ranching brothers in 1920s Montana. One is a more refined brother (Jesse Plemons) who marries a widow (Kirsten Dunst) and brings her and her sensitive son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) to live with them on the ranch that he shares with his rawhide tough, a man’s-man brother played by Benedict Cumberbatch. (He's right up there with Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall.)  But underneath the grit, the chaps, and the smell of horses, Cumberbatch hides his homosexuality which adds to the tension between him and the widow’s son.

I reminded of Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, the 2005 movie about a rodeo cowboy (Jake Gyllenhaal) and ranch hand (Heath Ledger) who fall in love with tragic, sorrowful results. (Anne Hathaway plays Gyllenhaal’s wife; Michelle Williams is Ledger’s) The story behind the movie is best told in Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay (2007), which includes Annie Proulx’s original 1997 short story that appeared in The New Yorker. It includes the screenplay and essays by Proulx and the screenwriters Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry.

For those wishing to go back further, read McMurtry’s piece “Eros in Archer County” found In a Narrow Grave Essays on Texas (1968). He is no stranger to writing candidly about the range of the sexual mores of the post-World War II Old West. (With the exception of Lonesome Dove, McMurtry is a better essayist than novelist.)

Passing and George Schuyler

Passing, based on the 1929 Nella Larsen novel, is set in 1920s New York, when Irene (Tessa Thompson) meets an old girlfriend Clare (Ruth Negga) who passes as white.  Irene has misgivings about rekindling their friendship. When Clare asks Irene if she can join her at the Negro League Charity Dance, she explains to Irene that she has a longing. “I so much want to be around Negroes again. Talk with them. Hear them laugh.”

Coincidently this same sentiment appears in George Schuyler’s 1931 novel Black No More which I read just last year. (Isabell Wilkerson recommended the book in an interview.) In Schuyler’s biting satire Black people are able to get an operation that allows people to bleach their skin white—and is advertised as a new way to "solve the American race problem."  However, the strategy is flawed as Max the main character who had undergone the Black-No-More operation begins to have remorse for his decision:

"He (Max) was not finding life as a white man the rosy existence he had anticipated. He was forced to conclude that it was pretty dull and that he was bored. As a boy he had been taught to look up to white folks as just a little less than gods’ now he found them little different from the Negroes, except that they were uniformly less courteous and less interesting.

Often when the desire for the happy-go-lucky, jovial good fellowship of the Negros came upon him strongly, he would go down to Auburn Avenue (in Atlanta) and stroll around the vicinity, looking at the dark folk and listening to their conversation and banter."

The Larsen and Schuyler books were published just two years apart.

Lucy, Desi and Oscar Hijuelos

While watching the dynamics between Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, in Being the Ricardos, a passage from Oscar Hijuelos’ 1989 novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love came immediately to mind. Like the movie, there are some behind the scenes description of the I Love Lucy show in Hijuelos book and impressions. Mambo Kings centers on two brother, Cesar and Nestor Castillo, who emigrate from Cuba to New York City in 1949. Both are musicians and their band The Mambo Kings achieve a moderate amount of success during the golden era of mambo. They even land a guest spot on I Love Lucy.

In one scene Desi Arnaz confides to the Castillo brothers his frustration with Lucy:

If you knew what I have to go through every day with this woman. These American women are enough to drive you nuts! My mother told me a million times: Ricky, never marry an American woman unless you are looking for one big headache. And she was right, I should’ve married that girl back in Cuba! Now there was a quiet girl who never bothered me, who knew where her bread was buttered. She wasn’t crazy! She always left me alone, you know what I mean, compañeros?

Whether it be a movie, a novel, or a television program Desi and Lucy’s marriage was complicated.

BTW, they did make a movie based on the Mambo Kings starring Armand Assante and Antonio Banderas. Judging from the clip below it looks like a strong candidate for our next movie night or as a soundtrack for a house party.