through someone else's view

[kaigou]

Rereading Rain Fall by Barry Eisler, and I'm reminded of one of my favorite nonfiction reading topics (other than architecture, that is): travelogues of places I've been, written by non-natives. Specifically, works like Ciao, America (written by an Italian attache stationed in Washington DC). There's something intriguing to me about what people notice, when they arrive as adults to an unfamiliar culture, things I take for granted as a native.

I don't mean in the sense of romanticizing the locale (although that is a risk), but in the little things. It's part of the tone, but also part of the details noticed. It's gotten to the point that I treasure a writer (of any origin) who can do the same in fiction, and one reason that many SFF books disappoint me, because these details are often left out (or just as bad, read like they could be from anywhere).

My travelogue-books are all hardcopy (and in the library, at that, and I'm too lazy to go digging for them), but this copy of Rain Fall is electronic, so it's handier as example. It's a scene very early in the book, where John Rain is trailing his most recent assignment. Long, but I think worth it as illustration.

The light at the bottom of Dogenzaka was red, and the crowd congealed as we approached the five-street intersection in front of the train station. Garish neon signs and massive video monitors flashed frantically on the buildings around us. A diesel-powered truck ground its gears as it slogged through the intersection, laborious as a barge in a muddy river, its bullhorns blaring distorted right-wing patriotic songs that momentarily drowned out the bells commuters on bicycles were ringing to warn pedestrians out of the way. A street hawker angled a pushcart through the crowds, sweat running down the sides of his face, the smell of steamed fish and rice following in his zigzagging wake. An ageless homeless man, probably a former sarariman who had lost his job and his moorings when the bubble burst in the late eighties, slept propped against the base of a streetlight, inured by alcohol or despair to the tempest around him.

The Dogenzaka intersection is like this night and day, and at rush hour, when the light turns green, over three hundred people step off the curb at the same instant, with another twenty-five thousand waiting in the crush. From here on, it was going to be shoulder to shoulder, chest to back. I would keep close to Kawamura now, no more than five meters, which would put about two hundred people between us. I knew he had a commuter pass and wouldn’t need to go to the ticket machine. Harry and I had purchased our tickets in advance so we would be able to follow him right through the wickets. Not that the attendant would notice one way or the other. At rush hour, they’re practically numbed by the hordes; you could flash anything, a baseball card, probably, and in you’d go.

The light changed, and the crowds swept into one another like a battle scene from some medieval epic. An invisible radar I’m convinced is possessed only by Tokyoites prevented a mass of collisions in the middle of the street. I watched Kawamura as he cut diagonally across to the station, and maneuvered in behind him as he passed. There were five people between us as we surged past the attendant’s booth. I had to stay close now. It would be chaos when the train pulled in: five thousand people pouring out, five thousand people stacked fifteen deep waiting to get on, everyone jockeying for position. Foreigners who think of Japan as a polite society have never ridden the Yamanote at rush hour.

The river of people flowed up the stairs and onto the platform, and the sounds and smells of the station seemed to arouse an extra sense of urgency in the crowd. We were swimming upstream against the people who had just gotten off the train, and as we reached the platform the doors were already closing on handbags and the odd protruding elbow. By the time we had passed the kiosk midway down the platform, the last car had passed us and a moment later it was gone. The next train would arrive in two minutes.

Comments

[taithe]

Thank you for providing this quote! It's beautifully written.

As someone who, before now, has never lived in anything resembling a big city, I find when writing about a fictional one my writing tends to describe details locales don't really bother with such as the taste of air, the cacophony of vehicles/construction/airplanes, or the vast collage of shiny, faceless buildings. It's based on a desire to share an experience that others may lack or may have forgotten. It works a lot better in writing than say, a normal conversation, where people just stare at you confused and politely move on.

Do you have any recommendations for travelogues off the top of your head? My library card is itching to be used.

[kaigou]

Many of my favorites are focused on roadtrips (a passion of mine), and that interest in turn is influenced by having read William Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways when I was in high school. There are big names of the genre, like Travels with Charley (which I've never read) and smaller names, like Highway 50 by James Lilliefors. Some are out of print, like "New Mexico, New Mexico", which I absolutely adore and has tones of Bill Bryson's dry humor, but it's buried in the library and I'm too lazy right now. (I can dig it out, if you're curious.)

A'course, I suppose you can't mention this entire genre without mentioning one of the bigger names -- Bill Bryson -- though I'm told that in some of his books, his fact-checking is either too lax or he's just too hyperbolic. (I've been told his book on Australia is particularly so.)

Although for the ultimate (if historical) renditions on America, you have to read Mark Twain's Roughing It. There's a reason the man is considered one of the greatest American humorists. He's got something to say about everything, I swear.

Harder to find, but worth it when I can: stories written by non-Americans (as opposed to Americans raised outside of wherever they're writing about), like Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip: The 1935 Travelogue of Two Soviet Writers which I came across at the library once and wish I'd gotten a copy of, but never seem to remember when I'm actually buying/looking at books. Figures. And then there's Road Scholar: Coast to Coast Late in the Century, written by a coworker of one of my closest friends, Andrei Codrescu (born in Transylvania, came to US and worked for NPR). I adore his voice. Less friendly of a voice is Joseph O'Connor's travelogue, Sweet Liberty; Dublin-born & -raised, he comes to America to visit all towns in the US called "Dublin". If you don't mind a bit of snark in your observations, that is. And of course, Ciao, America by (journalist, not attache, my bad) Beppe Severgnini. He also wrote another about life in London, but I haven't read that one yet.

Then there are the returnees, like Afshin Molavi's Persian Pilgrimages: Journeys Across Iran. His family left Iran twenty years ago, and he goes back as an adult. And there are the expat stories, like Bill Holm's Coming Home Crazy, which is a collection of essays from his time in China. And then there are the inveterate travellers who never seem to stay in one place for very long, and seem to come at everything from the position of outsider (though I believe Bryson is one of the few that will turn the lens back on his own culture) -- like Pico Iyer, who's written a dozen or so (?) books on all sorts of places. Iyer's kind of hit-or-miss, though; parts of Sun After Dark were just flawless, and other essays... lots of flaws. I'm not sure what Iyer's story is, but when it comes to stranger-in-a-strange-land, I tend to swing more towards writers with anthropology backgrounds (that is: trained to see and question their own privilege's influence or impact), like Rosemary Mahoney. She's not perfect, and I enjoyed the questions she raises (and refuses to give pat answers for) in Whoredom in Kimmage (women in ireland), but I enjoyed Early Arrival of Dreams (urban China) better.

Unfortunately, what seems to dominate the travelogue field (or what gets stocked on shelves?) are stories written by middle-class, white, American/Anglo women who randomly decide to pick up and travel to some exotic clime. Or travel and keep travelling. They're almost never trained in anthropology, or even in realizing the observer influences the observed, hell, trained in anything, it seems. Privilege is so rarely addressed, and instead many of them seem to treat the world as though it... well, not that it owes them a favor, but as though it's just one big honking pearl and they're just traipsing through, no privilege to see here, but aren't the natives just the friendliest bunch? Such sweethearts. (Makes me want to choke, or choke the author, or failing that, just throw the book.)

It is really, really hard to find travelogues written about anywhere (in English, or translated) by women of color from non-USian cultures. Let alone from PoC women about the US itself. I'd give my eyeteeth for a female, English-translated, chromatic, dryly amused (often at the observer as well as the observed) voice like Severgnini or Bryson. I know they're out there; there's plenty of 'em posting on LJ/DW.

One I'm waiting to read once CP's done with it is George McDonald Fraser's memoirs of coming to Hollywood to write screenplays for Bond movies: Light's on at Signpost. Yes, the author of the Flashman novels! Same dry wit, same tongue-in-cheek slightly grouchy but amused tone that I also love in many of Eco's essays. (Another one from Fraser -- a war memoir -- is Quartered Safe Out Here, which is a recollection of his time in Burma during WWII.)

[kaigou]

Note: I referenced Bryson, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't the author of "New Mexico, New Mexico". Sorry if it gives that impression!

[nagasvoice]

Actually, what jumps out at me in this piece is the research. Lots of statistics on the numbers of people, which is not something you get from just looking at this scene. Tailing somebody in this crush is impressive, so it does a nice job of proving the hero's competence.

[kaigou]

The numbers add a definite kind of concreteness to it, as opposed to saying "lots of people" or "the crush of bodies" (oh, that's a phrase I've heard plenty). Giving actual numbers boggles me, like I have to stop and think about that "five thousand people stacked fifteen deep". It makes for a perfect contrast against the individuals he points out, like the guy zigzagging his cart and the homeless ex-salaryman.

What's both awesome (and really freaking initimidating) is that Eisler writes the entire series with this kind of deft observation. Cripes.

[onthehill]

\o/ I was just on the Yamanote line at rush hour last week \o/
I'm not sure of that crossing and entry, but the radar works for real :)

[kaigou]

Hah, I think Rain Fall was published in... I want to say the early aughts, maybe? But it says volumes to me when you finish a book and there's an afterward from the author to any Tokyoites, saying that if they go looking for a certain grocery store mentioned in the book, he actually moved its location up a block and a half. That, and he doesn't just have the character "go down two blocks", he gives street names. I expect there to be some variation just for the sake of fiction, but dropping street names, subway names, mentioning locations, really gives the story a solidness. Most international espionage thrillers, sadly, miss this kind of detail, and I'm always left thinking, "well, I know you said it's Moscow, but other than mentioning the three main tourist spots that I'd expect are in any Fromer's Guide, what else about it says Moscow to me? Wearing thick winter coats does not make an entire city culture, y'know!"