A standard dodge for politicians who are asked to account for some comment is that the statement was “quoted out of context.” In most cases, it’s just a way to avoid being held accountable for one’s statements, but sometimes it’s a valid complaint. A recent article on travel was a masterpiece of out-of-context quoting.
Most people who see this article have probably seen an article in the New Yorker called “The Case Against Travel” by Agnes Callard. Such a provocative title was sure to capture the attention of anyone who loves travel.
It’s rare to see an article about travel that is so totally devoid of a single positive word about it. The article must have generated a massive number of hits because, as it admits in its third sentence, “nearly everyone loves to travel.” It stirred up quite a reaction on the internet.
The author is right, nearly everyone does love travel. In my experience, when the subject comes up, people get misty, with far-away, longing looks in their eyes. Just the thought of it stirs people’s hearts.
A favorite quote of travelers is Mark Twain’s: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
It’s hard to categorically dismiss the value of travel, but Ms. Callard attempts that. Ironically, I thought the article did make some points, though they were in the context of an assertion that I strenuously disagree with. She makes the case against a certain kind of superficial, self-involved travel, but then she makes the leap of presuming that all travel is like that. That wouldn’t withstand even the most casual investigation.
She makes her case by selecting the most negative aspects of travel, and completely eliminating anything that might contradict her premise.
I get the point about travelers who are so self-involved, people who just take their show to another location and continue it, who are oblivious to their surroundings, who never open their minds or hearts to the place or its people, who collect destinations like charms on a bracelet and brag about crossing places off their bucket lists. It’s true, there’s some ugly tourism out there. However, it’s not all like that. In fact, I believe that as travel is evolving, travelers are getting better, for the reasons Mark Twain mentioned. Travel does tend to make people less bigoted. The travel industry is evolving along with the traveling public away from that superficial, egotistical kind of travel, toward more immersion, interaction and responsibility.
In her second paragraph, she rolls out some of her biggest guns. Ralph Waldo Emerson is among those whom she claims to be on her side in hating travel. She quotes him saying, “Travel is a fool’s paradise.” That’s true, Emerson did say that in his essay “Self Reliance”. Yet, this is totally severed from the context.
Emerson lived from 1803 to 1882. For most of his life there weren’t even railroads, let alone cars or airplanes. Even with transportation at such a primitive state, he traveled to Europe three times. That was a lot for that period. Even today, when you can hop on a jet in New York and be in London seven hours later, it’s probably a small minority of Americans who have traveled to Europe three times.
“The wise man stays at home,” he wrote, “and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance, that he goes the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet.”
We can assume that, when Emerson traveled three times to Europe, it was part of what he considered “his necessities, his duties.”
His first trip to Europe was in 1832 when he was in mourning for his wife, who had died the previous year. As RalphWaldoEmersonhouse.org says, “Emerson suddenly decided to go to Europe to receive relief from an illness and to hopefully meet with writers he viewed as kindred spirits. It was his first trip to Europe, but not his last—he subsequently made two additional visits.”
On his first European tour, his ship landed in Malta. He spent the next three months exploring Italy. He climbed Mount Vesuvius and wrote in his journal: “We got to the top & looked down into the red & yellow pits the navel of this volcano.” He toured Florence, Rome, Venice, Milan and Paris and then went to England to seek out the writers Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth and Thomas Carlyle. Emerson wrote a book about his travels in England, called English Traits.
Emerson’s statements must be taken in the context of one who was among the most well-traveled people of his time. He was not categorically opposed to travel, just to superficial travel.
He also traveled to California, which was a more difficult trip from his home in Massachusetts in 1871 than sailing to Europe. When John Muir, “the father of the national parks,” heard Emerson was in Yosemite, he requested a meeting with the writer who had so greatly influenced him. He then toured Yosemite with Emerson.
Emerson was well-traveled not only by the number of miles but in the way he traveled. He obviously did not think that travel is categorically bad. He explained what kind of travel he didn’t care for.
“I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things.”
Travel for art or for study, he said, but if you are looking for something that you lack within yourself, you will not find it. Wherever you go, there you are.
One source the author called “the greatest hater of travel,” said, “I abhor new ways of life and unfamiliar places… The idea of traveling nauseates me… Ah, let those who don’t exist travel!… Travel is for those who cannot feel… Only extreme poverty of the imagination justifies having to move around to feel.”
Well, what can I say to that? It speaks for itself, a direct statement from someone who hates travel. So be it. It proves nothing to me. The sentiment is diametrically opposed to the Twain quote, and to my feelings about travel, but each to his own.
Ultimately, I guess where I differ with this article is not in the facts, but in the attitude.
When I travel, I like to take a book as a companion. I try to find something that resonates with the trip. Once, I was traveling to China and I found a first-person narrative of a travel writer traveling to China. It seemed perfect.
The author took a train tour, which put him in a group of other people. They were curious and asked questions about what he did for a living. He didn’t feel like talking about it and found their curiosity annoying. He went on for pages talking about how irritated he was by them trying to talk to him.
After a while, I had to put the book down, even before it got to China. I had to go bookless. I realized it wasn’t a good traveling companion for me. I had a similar impression with this article. I respected the author and the publication, but in the end, it was so rancorous, so utterly devoid of any positive evaluations of anything that it was unpleasant to read. It was as if some kind of Grammarly program had sifted out any positive impulses. I couldn’t have that person as a traveling companion, someone who only saw the negative in everything.
I had to give it up, with all due respect, and agree to disagree.
David Cogswell is a freelance writer working remotely, from wherever he is at the moment. Born at the dead center of the United States during the last century, he has been incessantly moving and exploring for decades. His articles have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Fortune, Fox News, Luxury Travel Magazine, Travel Weekly, Travel Market Report, Travel Agent Magazine, TravelPulse.com, Quirkycruise.com, and other publications. He is the author of four books and a contributor to several others. He was last seen somewhere in the Northeast US.
One thought on “Thoughts on ‘The Case Against Travel’”
Thank you, David, for taking we travelers one or more steps further into our selves, as we try to understand the wanderlust that drives us to go. I’ve been a traveler since childhood, though only in reading or visiting relatives in my first foreign country, Canada, where most of my relatives lived. As I got older, I realized I inherited my grandmother’s genes for travel, and at times, called it the grass is greener syndrome. When I got to the point of traveling more, excessively more, later in life, especially when retired, I realized I simply needed to know more about this world. Marrying a geologist was a helpful tool, as well, one who wanted to go places, too. His favorite place is ‘on the bow of an expedition ship,’ though after 5 trips rafting through the Grand Canyon, I would say that might be as well. My mother never went anywhere, except to visit her family in Canada, and I could never understand it. She could never understand me. I see in this writing, the you have met such people as well, and very likely cannot excite them by what you’ve seen, learned and contributed to others by your travels, so you didn’t try. My mother didn’t even care about those most famous flying squid I spotted, so I didn’t try.
Once again, David, thank you for sharing your perspective, your introspection, and that of RWEmerson about reaching out to life and visions of the world. You’ve given me some good things to think about as I mundanely weed today, and sidetrack later to planning for the 2024 eclipse. Your final comment, ‘from somewhere,’ is the fun one.