The Kingdom by the Sea
"To be anonymous and traveling in an interesting place is an intoxication... " 
A few years ago, while I was working in Rochester, NY, I crutched my way across the street to a small bookstore to get away from students for a few moments. The older couple who apparently owned the shop sat at the front of the store doing inventory on a pile of books. I could tell they were book lovers; they turned each over thoughtfully as they noted author, edition, and publisher. To legitimize my presence in the small shop as a reader, I wandered to travel and looked at books about the U.K. I saw The Kingdom by the Sea and as soon as I read the summary, I was hooked:
From the white cliffs of Dover to Cornwall and Wales, on to Ulster and Scotland, Paul Theroux sets out on a three-month journey around Britain's coast.
The way the British Isles worked for me at the time was as a gray utopia: a place with enough rain to match my gloomy moods, an abundance of rocky coastal views, a refined culture, and a bucolic Merchant & Ivory aesthetic. I loved the names of all things British: Gravesend, Bristol, Cape Wrath, Tenby, Cardiff by the Sea...
But it's mythology that suffers because Theroux is not a newspaper travel writer: he deliberately avoids castles, monuments, and tourists. He is preoccupied by really seeing a place, encountering its inhabitants, and learning its subtleties. Some people read this as Theroux being a grouchy, pessimistic, and even callous traveler but this is simplistic and wrong. I love his honesty. You learn what being on the dole is, he offers opinions of why the English stare out to sea, and he comes up with names for the people he encounters: Mr. Mould, Mrs. Mumby, Alf and Rose Doggett, Harry Gummer, and a dozen others that keep you chuckling as you read.
Travel writing is difficult: it is arrogant to assume even slight understanding of a place based on a brief encounter. Beyond this, giving a place a context, both historic and modern involves a lot of research and study. Theroux manages to avoid sounding glib in his arrogances, and in fact his work to really give places their context saves him from sounding too pompous, self assured, or myopic.
Theroux travels in 1982, the year that Britain and Argentina fought over the Falkland Islands1. Instead of trying to write something "timeless," he studies the British through their attitudes and responses to the brief conflict. His descriptions are dated; Ireland is a much happier place now than the early 1980s. What was once a place of hopelessness and turmoil is a shining example of possibilities in today's European Union. What makes the book remain worthwhile is that it is an unapologetic snapshot; as much a recent history as it is a travelogue.
This book has been a great companion over the last month in South Dakota. Interestingly, I found myself not really reading it when I was away from here. The moment I got back is when I started fumbling for Theroux and tales that brought real clarity to the fantasies I'd made of "elsewhere."
Occasionally I act as a "grown up" and turn down my instincts on impulse purchases. It's painful responsibility, acceleration from a life consisting of possibility to a life defined by constraint. For all those moments, I wonder if I'm missing a friend like Theroux.
1Described rather cynically as "two bald men fighting over a comb."
12:15:11 PM 
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