Jan

Memorable Moments: Literary Excursions

by Your friends at OIC on January 28, 2019

Let a good book take you away.
© iStock

Who doesn’t love a good read? That’s why we figured some good reads about some great reads would be something our readers might really enjoy reading! So while our bloggers take a moment to gather their words, we invite you on a literary adventure with these popular literature-based posts from the past.

A Wanderlust for Words

Books that evoke a sense of place make travelers of us all. This post also includes a free download of wanderlust-worthy book recommendations! Go to the post.

Wordplay and Watercolor: Edward Lear in Gozo

Edward Lear’s wanderlust led the British poet to Gozo, Malta, a place he celebrated in wordplay and watercolor paintings. Go to the post.

Cannery Row Catalysts: John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts

John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts, provided creative inspiration for each other on Cannery Row, resulting in great literary characters for years to come. Go to the post.

To uncover more great reads from the past, check out the Blog Topics & Archive section. And to find a new “Oh, I see!” moment every week in your inbox, take this opportunity to subscribe.

Your friends at OIC Comments

Literary World

Jul

A Wanderlust for Words

by Joyce McGreevy on July 11, 2017

Daunt Books for Travelers on Marylebone High St, London celebrates wanderlust and reading while traveling. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Daunt Books for Travelers, on the Marylebone High Street London,
is an original Edwardian bookshop.
© Joyce McGreevy

The Enchantment of
Reading While Traveling

If there were an award for writing and reading while traveling, Emily Hahn would have been World Champion. Early in her 92-year life of wanderlust, Hahn solo-traveled from the Congo to China. That was in the 1920s, and by 1997, Hahn had reported for The New Yorker from around the world, written 52 books, and read voraciously across genres.

She’d also enrolled at an all-male college, overcome opium addiction, carried out underground relief work during WWII, been the concubine of a Chinese poet, married a British spy, and become a pioneering environmentalist.

A vintage edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn symbolizes wanderlust and the pleasures of reading while traveling. (public domain)

Books, like rafts, take us “drifting along ever so far away.”

This summer, as reading and wanderlust become one—when books hit the beaches, travelers recharge e-readers, and reading recharges travelers—consider how Hahn exemplifies the double enchantment of reading while traveling.

As a child, Hahn took to books like an explorer to new lands. “I was a deep reader, plunging into a story and remaining immersed even after I’d finished it,” she wrote in No Hurry to Get Home.

A natural wanderer, she preferred literary characters who were “admirably mobile”—Mowgli, David Copperfield, Huck Finn.

Like Hahn, many a traveler has drifted downriver or flown across continents in the company of a good book. When writers evoke a strong sense of place, even staycationers’ book pages become boarding passes.

Two Bookended Moments

When my mother was a teenager in the 1930s, she felt electrified by déjà vu while reading a novel set in London. The bolt that leapt off the page described someone crossing the Hammersmith Bridge by taxi. My mother, who lived in the American Southwest, knew she had glimpsed her future.

Eventually forgotten, the moment lay buried for many years. Then one day, the gleaming black cab my mother was riding in crossed a bridge with spectacular green towers. . .

Did Mom know she was nearing The Dove, a favorite Hammersmith pub of novelist Graham Greene? It was he who had evoked a sense of place so powerful that it spanned her future, present, and past.

A woman reading in a window seat of a bookshop in Bloomsbury, London symbolizes the pleasures of reading while traveling, a wanderlust for words. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

The geography of a reader’s world is layered and complex.
© Joyce McGreevy

A Story of Here and Now

Over a lifetime, Mom’s reading-while-traveling encompassed worlds on and off the page.

Her literary wanderlust continued after she’d been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Once, a doctor found her reading War and Peace and tactlessly asked why she had “started reading such a long book.” My mother cheerfully replied, “Well, if not now, Doctor, when?”

Then she canceled her next two appointments to make one more visit to London.

Lost in Place

Have you ever read a novel about a place while you were in that place, or preparing to go there?

Some travelers say it’s a bad idea and can even make you sick. They’re referring to “Paris Syndrome.” It’s the shock that occurs when romanticized expectations of a place clash with its realities.

Remember that as you lose yourself in Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. Places are alive and revise themselves. Cafés where a “lost generation” of artists once gathered become hubs for Instagrammers with GPS. And who’s to say they aren’t artists, too?

Vintage books on display in Aarhus, Denmark symbolize reading while traveling to distant places and times, through a wanderlust for words. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Vintage books on display in Aarhus, Denmark invite readers to travel
to distant places and times.
© Joyce McGreevy

Bookmarking Places

Still, there are moments when the place in the book and the place outside the book merge into one. Drowsy from southern French sunlight, you look up from A Year of Provence and inhale the fragrance of lavender fields.

A prairie in Illinois recalls Willa Cather’s sense of place and inspires a traveling reader’s wanderlust for words. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

“I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins,
and I did not want to be anything more.”–My Ántonia, by Willa Cather
© Joyce McGreevy

Or you discover a landmark in a town you’ve just moved to, precisely as the protagonist in your audiobook does, too.

That happened to me with The Time Traveler’s Wife. A newcomer to Evanston, Illinois, I was walking to work and listening to the novel on headphones, when I came to a place called Bookman’s Alley. At that very moment, the time-traveling narrator said, “ . . . and lo and behold, it’s Bookman’s Alley.”

Today Bookman’s Alley, one of the last of the great bookshops, is gone—except for readers who time-travel there with author Audrey Niffenegger. Books that evoke real places may become the last outposts of what such places signified.

Sometimes a book, like Huck’s raft, becomes the mode of travel. It takes us to places we’ve never been, in ways we’ll never forget. That’s how I traveled to Antarctica.

A 19th century French book about the South Pole symbolizes reading while traveling and inspires a traveling reader’s wanderlust for words. (Image public domain)

“One hundred thousand years is just a moment in Antarctica.”
—from Antarctic Navigation, by Elizabeth Arthur

It looked like a giant block of ice—the hardcover book, that is.

It felt like one, too. As I hefted the 800-page Antarctic Navigation, I wondered what had attracted me to a tome encased in images of “the highest, driest, coldest place on Earth.”

Yet in reading Elizabeth Arthur’s narrative, I became an Antarctic citizen, an eager member of a perilous expedition—I who scowled at mild snowfalls and looked horrified if someone uttered the word camping.

Books with a sense of place can do that to us, make us homesick for places we’ve never been and take us more deeply into where we are.

The Readable Suitcase

In 1997, while taking my son to Italy, I decided against purchasing Michael Levey’s acclaimed Florence: A Portrait. Digital editions didn’t exist and the print book weighed several pounds.

But on Day 3 of our month in Florence, I paid double the U.S. price to lug it to a flat on the Via Guelfa. It quickly became our household god, a Virgil to Dante’s city that we consulted at the beginning and end of every day.

Vintage books and suitcases on display in San Francisco symbolize reading while traveling to distant places and times, through a wanderlust for words. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

At SFO, retro suitcases, books, and cameras reflect connections between
traveling, reading, and remembering.
© Joyce McGreevy

So a few stylish outfits missed the return journey. The author’s style was worthier of room in the suitcase.

Oh, I see: Some books are meant to travel; some books are the compass by which we travel; and some books are destinations of their own.

How about you? Placed any good books and booked any good places lately? For more ideas on reading while traveling, download these Wanderlust-Worthy Book Recommendations.

Comment on the post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

Joyce McGreevy Comments

Crossing Cultures/Language & Culture/Literary World/Worldwide Sites

Feb

Wordplay and Watercolor: Edward Lear in Gozo

by Joyce McGreevy on February 8, 2016

Edward Lear's watercolor painting of Gozo, Malta, a place he visited with a traveler's wanderlust and one that inspired his wordplay. (Image by Edward Lear, public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

A tireless traveler, Edward Lear expressed the magnificence of Gozo, Malta,
through delicate watercolor paintings and colorful wordplay.
Edward Lear [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Wanderlust on My Lear-ical Visit to Malta

It’s winter in Malta, 1862. Edward Lear, lover of wordplay and watercolor, is writing a letter. His phrasing echoes the rhythm of Mediterranean tides against this tiny archipelago:

“I draw constantly on the Barracca point; meaning to paint a picture thereof one day; and I wander up and down the beautiful streets of Valletta and Senglea; and rejoice in the delightful heat and the blue sky; and watch the thousand little boats skimming across the harbor at sunset.”

Boats line Senglea marina in Malta, a place that inspired Edward Lear's wanderlust, wordplay, and watercolor paintings. (Image by Joyce McGreevy)

A winter sunset transforms Senglea, Malta into a living watercolor.
© Joyce McGreevy

As you read those words 154 years after Lear penned them, it’s a winter morning in Malta and I am here, too. Come along with me to this tiny republic just south of Sicily and east of Tunisia. See for yourself the thousand little boats, the luzzus.

The brightly painted wooden boats, or luzzus, in Gozo, Malta inspired the wanderlust of wordplay poet and watercolor painter Edward Lear. (Image by Joyce McGreevy)

The tradition of Malta’s brightly painted wooden boats began with the ancient Phoenicians.
© Joyce McGreevy

Linger at a café table alongside the water. Leave your cellphone at the bottom of the suitcase.

Should you order a pastizzi, Malta’s savory version of stuffed pastry? You should.

If you look across Grand Harbor, up to the raised walled city of Valletta, you’ll find “the Barracca point,” better known as Upper Barrakka Gardens.

From this lofty fortress, Lear would revel in his wanderlust, gazing back at Senglea as he sketched and painted in watercolor.

Wintering and Wandering in Malta

Best known for his wordplay, the author of The Book of Nonsense was a compulsive traveler, writer, and artist. Edward Lear logged 30 volumes of travel diaries, wrote countless letters, and created thousands of watercolors.

In Malta alone, he produced 300 watercolors. He painted over many of them, possibly out of frustration. The British colonials who had enjoyed his 1866 exhibit in Malta paid him handsomely—but only in compliments. Few paintings sold.

Edward Lear's watercolor painting of St. Julian's Bay, Malta, a place that inspired the wanderlust of this British master of wordplay. (Image by Edward Lear, public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

Edward Lear’s watercolors captured specific moments. After painting this view of St. Julian’s Bay,
the poet quickly scribbled the note “5:16pm, 29 Dec. 1865.”
Edward Lear [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Lear first arrived in Malta on a ticket that he bought for 10 pounds. You’re traveling on a shoestring, too, but Malta in winter is affordable. Just rent a small flat on Triq San Frangisk (Saint Francis Street) and cook from the local markets.

“Pretty cheap fruit abounds,” Lear wrote to his sister in 1848. The Maltese are fastidious about fresh produce. This morning the greengrocer steers you away from produce that is “too old”—a mere two days. Come back this afternoon, he says, when the boats will come in and everything will be perfection.

You do and it is. “Grazzi ħafna!” Thank you so much!

Lear’s Wordplay Leads to World Play

But now it’s time to resume your quest. The call to adventure came as you researched Malta and stumbled upon two mysterious adjectives: pomskizillious and gromphiberous.

What does this wordplay describe? According to Lear, it’s the coast of Gozo. This is the northernmost island of Malta.

The name Gozo comes from the Castilian word for “joy,” a mood that combines with quiet calm in Edward Lear’s watercolors. Notice the details he added about colors and time of day.
Edward Lear [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Consider this: Malta’s mainland shows up as a tiny dot on a map of the Mediterranean. So the 26-square-mile Gozo practically qualifies as imaginary. Which makes it the ideal place to follow in the footsteps of a nonsense poet. Let wordplay lead to world play.

The easiest way to get to Gozo is to not be in a hurry. Enjoy the scenic bus ride to Cirkewwa and board the ferry that will take you to Mgarr Harbour.

Then leg it—the island’s less than nine miles long—until you reach the village of Xaghra (SHAH-rah). This is home to The Pomskizillious Museum of Toys, dedicated to the legacy of Edward Lear.

Oh, but it’s closed today. And tomorrow. Come back Saturday.

A shop sign outside The Pomskizillious Museum of Toys in Gozo, Malta pays tribute to Edward Lear, whose wanderlust inspired him to coin wordplay and create watercolor paintings about Gozo. (Image by Joyce McGreevy)

Into the Dice-Box of Small Events

No worries. Take a lesson from Lear, who obsessively planned his travels, but knew when to toss the itinerary:

“Put yourself as a predestinarian might say, calmly into the dice-box of small events, and be shaken out whenever circumstances ordain,” he once advised.

Your jaw drops as you view the landscape. Flinty, terraced hills soar into peaks and plateaus, some topped by ornate churches. Velvety, green valleys sweep down to startling azure seas.

The garrigue, or Mediterranean scrubland, shows off prickly pear cactus and yellow vetch, but also hides sea daffodils, spider orchids, crimson dragon’s teeth, and other floral secrets.

Prickly pear cactus grows wild in Gozo, Malta, a place Edward Lear visited with a traveler's wanderlust and one that inspired his wordplay and watercolor paintings. (Image by Joyce McGreevy)

Edward Lear noted the “strange and wild appearance” of prickly pear cactus, which grows
“in immense luxuriance over every crag and mountainside” in Gozo.
© Joyce McGreevy

You picture Lear in the midst of it, how “he would lift his spectacles and gaze for several minutes at the scene through a monocular glass he always carried.” Then he would capture it in watercolor with astounding speed.

Even in winter, the fragrance of pines, rosemary, thyme, and citrus pervades the air. You struggle to come up with words to describe this environment.

Suddenly, you laugh out loud. You have just have had an “Oh, I see” moment: Sometimes you need the wordplay of new language to describe a new place. Like pomskizillious. And gromphiberous.

The Pomskizillious Museum of Toys never does open. But by then, you’ve learned to appreciate what locals call GMT: Gozo Maybe Time. Meanwhile, you have:

wandered the island like Lear, a tireless walker and meticulous collector of moments.
seen Calypso’s Cave, mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey, where a sea nymph offered Ulysses immortality if he would remain her captive.
climbed into a “beautiful pea-green boat” at Dwerja, where you glided through sea caves and gazed up at the precipitous coastline that inspired Lear.

A hiker stares down from atop the Azure Window in Gozo, Malta, place Edward Lear visited with a traveler's wanderlust and one that inspired his wordplay and watercolor paintings. (Image by Joyce McGreevy)

Poetic but precipitous: Does the cliff climber in Gozo, Malta know Edward Lear’s
cautionary limerick about the person from Cromer?
© Joyce McGreevy

This is Gozo, a place so stunning it seems imaginary. A place that inspires wanderlust, wordplay, and watercolor. It lures you with improbable beauty, inspires you to follow a nonsense poet’s trail, and hints that maybe, just maybe, you’ll attain immortality if you stay.

And really, is there anything more pomskizillious and gromphiberous than that?

The Azure Window graces the rugged coast of Gozo, Malta, a place that Edward visited with a traveler's wanderlust and one that inspired his wordplay and watercolor paintings. (Image by Joyce McGreevy)

Read Edward Lear’s travel writing and letters here. This is the source of all Lear quotations cited in this post.

The largest collection of Edward Lear’s watercolors is archived at Harvard University.

Comment on this post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

Joyce McGreevy 8 Comments

Literary World/Malta/The World's Art & Design/Wordplay

World Views:

Topics

Category Archives: Literary World

Memorable Moments: Literary Excursions

A Wanderlust for Words

Wordplay and Watercolor: Edward Lear in Gozo

Cannery Row Catalysts: John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts

A Wanderlust for Words