Mount TBR #64

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2016. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

Travels in Tartary, Thibet and China during the years 1844-5-6 - Évariste Régis Huc, C.M. a.k.a. Abbé Huc

Father Évariste Régis Huc was a French missionary Catholic priest. After 18 months of language immersion courses in Macau, he served the Church in the south of China, but moved north to Peking. From there he determined to minister to scattered Christian communities in Mongolia and beyond that he wanted to visit Lhasa, Tibet, where only one European had visited  before.

Father Huc is quite a storyteller. Like most travel writers, he’s probably rearranged incidents for effect, but I don’t mind such liberties. He’s very down home, writing about things we can relate to. Their dog Arsalan (Lion) was a Chinese dog, explained their local guide,  and so got sick and tired of the nomadic Tatar life. Arsalan ran off in favor of town lights and glitz. Sad Fr. Huc thinks it through:

At first, the loss of Arsalan grieved us somewhat.  We were accustomed to see him running to and fro in the prairie, rolling in the long grass, chasing the grey squirrels, and scaring the eagles from their seat on the plain.  His incessant evolutions served to break the monotony of the country through which we were passing, and to abridge, in some degree, the tedious length of the way.  His office of porter gave him especial title to our regret.  Yet, after the first impulses of sorrow, reflection told us that the loss was not altogether so serious as it had at first appeared.  Each day’s experience of the nomadic life had served more and more to dispel our original apprehension of robbers.  Moreover, Arsalan, under any circumstances, would have been a very ineffective guard; for his incessant galloping about during the day sent him at night into a sleep which nothing could disturb.  This was so much the case, that every morning, make what noise we might in taking down our tent, loading the camels, and so on, there would Arsalan remain, stretched on the grass, sleeping a leaden sleep; and when the caravan was about to start, we had always to arouse him with a sound kick or two.  Upon one occasion, a strange dog made his way into our tent, without the smallest opposition on the part of Arsalan, and had full time to devour our mess of oatmeal and a candle, the wick of which he left contumeliously on the outside of the tent.  A consideration of economy completed our restoration to tranquility of mind: each day we had had to provide Arsalan with a ration of meal, at least quite equal in quantity to that which each of us consumed; and we were not rich enough to have constantly seated at our table a guest with such excellent appetite, and whose services were wholly inadequate to compensate for the expense he occasioned.

Fr. Huc was a priest, after all, so totally expectable are his dismissive and patronizing views of reincarnation. It was his job to confront the Lamas with the dogmatical and moral truths  of the One True Church:

We commenced [discussion] with Christianity.  The Regent, always amiable and polished in his conversation with us, said that, as we were his guests, our belief ought to have the honour of priority.  We successively reviewed the dogmatical and moral truths.  To our great astonishment, the Regent did not seem surprised at anything we said.  “Your religion,” he incessantly repeated, “is conformable with ours; the truths are the same: we only differ in the explanations.  Of what you have seen and heard in Tartary and Thibet, there is, doubtless, much to blame; but you must not forget that the numerous errors and superstitions you may have observed, were introduced by ignorant Lamas, and that they are rejected by well-informed Buddhists.”  He only admitted, between him and us, two points of difference—the origin of the world, and the transmigration of souls.  The belief of the Regent, though it here and there seemed to approximate to the Catholic doctrine, nevertheless resulted in a vast pantheism; but he affirmed that we also arrived at the same result, and he did his best to convince us of this.

I have to admire the sheer courage of anybody attempting such discussions  through the medium of an imperfectly mastered second language.

Full disclosure: The two volumes total about 600 pages, a major commitment even for gluttonous readers like us. All I can say is that readers that like old travel books will like this narrative. It’s in an unclassifiable class by itself like West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon or Synge’s The Aran Islands. 

Mount TBR #50

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2016. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

First Russia Then Tibet – Robert Byron

Robert Byron is famous for one of the best travel narratives from between the wars, The Road to Oxiana. In Russia, he plays his usual pugnacious self and gets in the face of Soviet cultural officials and toadies, standing up for the individual’s right not to connect all art as fuel and exhaust of the class struggle. The first half is marred by too much economics and because, I am not an art historian, too much about the history of Russian painting.

The Tibet half wonderfully describes the misery of travel in a harsh environment:

The morning, which came at last, was the crisis of the expedition. My own face, for which I had constructed a mask out of two handkerchiefs, had ceased to drip, and was now covered with yellow scabs, which adhered unpleasantly to the surface of the beard. But those of M. and G. had liquefied in the night, and they arrived in my room to breakfast, speechless with despondency. The cold was intense; the room was filled with the odour of yak-dung and lamp-smoke; my head was pounding; and I had whispered to myself, during the despair of dressing, that if – if either of the other to suggest an about-turn, I should not oppose him. To endure this pain for three more weeks would be merely the weak-mindedness of the strong.

A wonderful book, I highly recommend it to readers into classic travel writing.

Mount TBR #34

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2016. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

Travelers and Travel Liars, 1660-1800 - Percy G. Adams

When I lived overseas, I wrote letters and a zine about expatriate life, thus becoming a travel writer of sorts. I had the irresistible impulse at times to stretch the truth to make the topic more vivid and real. But even when giving in to impulse prevailed, I never came close to the whoppers that travel liars told in the age of exploration and expansion. For instance, suspect reports about native peoples provided the basis for Rousseau’s ideas of the “noble savage,” a cultural stereotype that is still very much with us today, especially in the TV dystopias that are so popular today.

In my job, I often gather information, compare sources and decide where the truth is likely to be found. Adams was quite an inspiration because he’s skillful at going over differing accounts in order to figure out who plagiarized whom or exactly how and why, for example, the reputation of Capt. Bligh was besmirched. He also reveals the truth behind faking about the giants  of Patagonia, the Mississippi valley explorations that were never made by Hennepin and the tall tales of Lahontan and the respected Chateaubriand. There are many more topics in this relatively short book.

Readers interested in the history of travel narratives and literary history will get a kick out of this book. Adams makes a persuasive argument that travel books were the major influence on the evolution of the novel, especially the picaresques such as Smolett’s Roderick Random. At the very least, he persuades me that there are very fine distinctions to be made among geographical tomes to memoirs by captains to embellished tales to plagiarized materials to tall tales to outrageous hoaxes.