welcome to the second day of our eighth
annual symposium of wildness wilderness
the imagination my name's Ben Percy and
I'm an assistant professor in the
English department it is my pleasure to
welcome Tony door and Rolf Potts here
today they're going there panel is going
to be moderated by one of our all-star
graduate students
Lindsay Deandra and I would ask that you
silence your cellphone's now I would
also ask that you check out our brochure
if you didn't grab one on the way in we
have events coming up all through the
day including Rolf's reading at 4:00 in
this room and Anthony Doerr is reading
in the sunroom at 7:00 p.m. this evening
following this there'll be a reception
so if you want to hang out have some
snacks and corner the authors who would
love it if you bought their book
available in the lobby there and force
them to pen their signature in it so
please welcome the gang hi everybody
welcome to the eighth annual symposium
on wildness and to this afternoon's
panel on travel writing we are really
excited and honored to welcome novelist
Anthony Anthony Doerr and travel writer
Ralph Potts who are here to share their
experiences and storytelling from
rarefied regions of the world and the
human imagination this world is at once
growing smaller in some ways and larger
and others growing smaller with the
interventions of Technology and growing
larger as global economies continue to
separate certain ways of life from
others as our world changes an element
that has been preserved is that constant
pull toward escape the desire to
understand to read about
to travel and to write about parts of
the world that seemed to live outside of
our imaginations today we will hear here
from two different perspectives on
travel in place two modes of
understanding our world and how we
approach all of its corners in writing
and on foot from this panel we hope to
learn a little bit more about the role
of place and storytelling both fiction
and nonfiction and what it means in our
global world to read the familiar and
the unfamiliar to explore the less
traveled within the widely read as been
said my name is Lindsay d'andrea I'm a
student in an Iowa State's MFA program
for creative writing and the
environmental imagination and I will be
moderating today's panel there will be
some time at the end of the panel
discussion for audience questions so if
there's something that isn't covered
here make a note of it and you will have
time to ask it at the end of the panel
before we begin I just want to introduce
a little bit more about our panelists
Anthony Doerr is the author of four
books the shell collector about grace
four seasons in Rome and most recently
the memory wall from Montana to Liberia
Idaho to Norway doors short fiction is
widely known for its scope spanning
several continents covering a diverse
range of subjects and featuring all
kinds of different characters and their
unique stories he is one among a long
list of others the Rome Prize several
fellowships the National Magazine Award
for fiction to pushcart prizes and the
2010 short story prize in 2007 the
British literary magazine Granta placed
door on its list of 21 best young
American novelists he also writes a
regular column on science books for the
Boston Globe Roth Potts has reported
from work for more than 60 countries for
the likes of National Geographic
Traveler at the new yorker outside
magazine and The New York Times Magazine
among others his adventures spanning six
continents include piloting a fishing
boat 900 miles down the lowchen mekong
hitchhiking across Eastern Europe
traversing Israel on foot by sling a
Islip bicycling across Burma and
travelling across the world for six
weeks with no luggage or bags of any
kind Ralf Potts is widely known for
promoting the ethic of independent
as in his acclaimed book vagabonding his
new whose newest book marco polo didn't
go there became the first american
authored book to win italy's prestigious
Chatwin prize for travel travel writing
so with that I'd like to open the panel
with just a start of origin what draws
both of you are what what first drew you
to the idea of travel both in reality on
foot and on the page and two telling
stories from these sort of different
kinds of locations this working hey
thanks for coming everybody
um what drew me to travel I grew up in a
place maybe a little bit like Ames I
grew up in rural Ohio about an hour east
of Cleveland and I was the impertinent
and Cato would complain to my parents
why do we live here so flat and I had
maps on my walls from the time I was
very young I remember like maps of
Patagonia and maps of Alaska
my mom had a National Geographic
subscription so all those romantic
trapped Midwestern earth tropes I fell
into you know I love looking at all
those pictures and national Geographics
and now when I go back to Ohio I realize
I miss it I missed the hardwood trees
and those lush summers with the
fireflies spiraling up at night but I
was ready to leave when I was 18 and I
didn't go back for quite a long time I'm
in a similar situation we have a lot of
Midwestern representation I think at the
conference this year I grew up in Kansas
in Wichita and like my favorite part of
the year each year was going to Missouri
or Colorado or some place that felt
exotic at that age to me and I had a
really Protestant relationship with
travel I guess just for the idea that
you work hard your whole life and then
you retire and maybe you can travel if
you feel like it sort of thing but I at
a very young age my grandfather was a
Kansas farmer who quit school in the
eighth grade to farm and about the time
he retired my grandmother was diagnosed
with Alzheimer's disease and so I
realized as a teenager that that old
ethic of being
warded for a virtuous life of hard work
doesn't always pay off in real life and
so I resolved while young to travel I
went to college in Oregon for a while
and then when I was I worked for a year
as a landscaper in Seattle and then I
decided to scratch my travel itch by
traveling around the United States and
living in a van for seven months and I'm
still traveling almost 20 years later so
I didn't really scratch my travel achai
think I realized how how easy and
inexpensive and accessible travel is and
a lot of those ideas went in my first
book vagabonding and then since that
first u.s. trip I didn't have a passport
I was 25 but now I've traveled to many
countries since then so that sort of got
the ball rolling was there a second
after the question pretty much okay okay
so mr. potts one of the things you've
stressed stressed is the importance of
going slow in travel taking your time
visiting and living in foreign places in
order to absorb a more dynamic
understanding of a place a mr. door I
understand that you're a really big fan
of research and preparing a story and I
was hoping that you could both speak a
little bit about the necessity of
absorbing and connecting to a place to
generate these strong stories whether
fiction or nonfiction I can kick that
off well that also ties into my first
book vagabonding which is about the idea
that your relationship with travel is
gonna be different if you travel for six
months or a year than if you do a
typical vacation of one or two weeks and
Tony and I were talking he asked me the
great question what are you doing you
get sick or how do you deal with bad
food on the road and my answer was sort
of it depends on what kind of trip I'm
on if I'm on a two-week trip to
Southeast Asia and I get malaria well
then it's gonna ruin my trip but I've
had malaria twice in Southeast Asia and
I wasn't I was just there indefinitely
and have a plan to go home and I just
got over my disease and it became a part
of my experience and I moved on it's
also from from a narrative standpoint
from a writing standpoint there's
another thing we're talking about at
lunch
how often the traveler experiences other
countries but within the tourist mate
matrix which sort of reduces you to the
role of a consumer and I think the
longer you travel in the slower you go
the more you can get through that that
sort of consumer dynamic of travel and I
think that's the reason why so many so
much great nonfiction and fiction about
faraway places comes from returned Peace
Corps volunteers which includes like
bobster coaches and Paul Theru and Tony
de Souza and Piotr Hessler because they
they've broken through that veneer of
tourism they've learned local languages
and they've understood place places at
an intuitive level and so I'm not saying
you can't write about a place that
you've only been to for a day or a week
because many of the stories in my newest
book are about fairly brief encounters
but at that level of encounter you
almost have to acknowledge your role as
an outsider and someone who might be
seen in that in that sort of consumer
role as guests so I'm sure it has a
different dynamic for a fiction writer
yeah it doesn't it doesn't I've kept a
journal ever since I was 16 and my
friends used to make a lot of fun of me
for it and called my man diary like what
are you writing in there but it was
never really a place to just like
complain about Susie dumping me in
eleventh grade or something it wasn't as
so much about myself at all as just a
place to practice translating the world
into sentences and early on I learned
that when I was in a strange unfamiliar
place especially if I was a little bit
uncomfortable I was writing a lot more
in my journal then if I was at home
really all of my work my chief interest
in life is about habitual ization which
is just you know taking the same route
to work every day you know those of you
who've lived in the same house for a
long time and cook a thousand meals in
there you know where everything is in
every drawer and I'm interested in
seeing those habits not necessarily
shattered but shaken up a little bit you
know it's like when you rent a house and
you get there in the dark and you've got
to cook a meal it's a much more intense
experience and that's how I feel when
I'm in a store
change place especially if people around
me aren't speaking English and so really
for me beginning to even pretend to know
a place for fiction comes from that
Journal and just writing sentences that
you'll never know if they'll be used in
anything finished a great liberating
thing in in journal especially if your
handwriting is that you know this isn't
something that people will see and it's
a very different kind of writing than
you know writing for publication and
even if I'm doing a travel piece which
I've only done a few nonfiction travel
pieces you know I still keep a journal
in addition to the notes I'm taking for
for a magazine just because you know
it's free you can your sentences can be
crappy and you can write about the way a
tree intersects with the sky for as long
as you want the readers of the New York
Times getting super bored so for me a
beginning to absorb a play starts with
being going slow and looking at it and
trying to translate it into sentences
and you know if you're interested in
writing just start doing that in
airports you know play little games with
yourself you know you can make up
stories about people you probably
already do that in your head you know we
have so many distractions and
increasingly great ones like Downton
Abbey or something you know we were just
talking about but it's important to also
slow down just have a notebook that
doesn't also have Scrabble on it or
something you know and write write with
your hands in ink okay moving on to to
this idea of story both in in fiction
and nonfiction when you're when you're
traveling and you have these sort of
experiences or when you pick up on some
information that you feel might might
work really well for a story what is it
that sort of tells you that these
stories are the ones that that you want
to start with that you want to tell of
all the people that you meet on your
traveling or of all the the characters
that pop into your head what are the
ones that sort of connect you connect
with the most sometimes it's something
you know immediately and sometimes it
might not occur to you until months
later when you're sitting down at you
desk you know which which parts of a
travel experience resonated with you the
most yeah it's tough and I guess this
sort of addresses the whole idea of your
consciousness has to travel or versus
your consciousness as a writer who's
traveling and are you having experiences
to have experiences or you're having
experiences to collect experiences and
if you start taking notes in the middle
of experienced is it gonna ruin your
experience or is it gonna ruin your
writing I mean it's a it's it's
interesting I think once you're in a
certain writer mindset you can't ever
stop thinking about how am I gonna write
about this and you don't want to sort of
prostitute your consciousness constantly
towards the act of writing because you
want to have something spontaneous and
and and true going on but I think also
the writers that writers consciousness
can all can also challenge you to do
things and engage people in a way that
you wouldn't normally again going back
to the consumer level of travel where
you're sort of receiving experiences and
comfort and new sites as opposed to
experiencing them so I'm trying to think
of specific examples well like in my
latest book I have a story about this
really eccentric guy in in Beirut who
was so friendly and so overwhelmingly
hospitable that I named the story my
Beirut hostage crisis I could just
couldn't he was so nice I couldn't get
away from them I I knew immediately that
I was gonna write about him and then one
of the biggest challenges was just
because he was so flamboyant actually if
you come I'll touch on this and my
reading he was so flamboyant it was a
matter of what not to write about him
because lesbi lesbian Lebanon is a very
serious place that wasn't even a
Freudian slip he was a dude loved
Lebanon as a serious is a serious place
and there was something very comical
about this guy named mr. Ibrahim but if
I just concentrated on the comical
aspects of him just a very eccentric
weird guy then it would have sold short
what the true story was which is how
this guy reacted to living in a place
that should be a great you know
Mediterranean city but isn't because of
war and so I immediately knew I was
gonna write about him somebody I didn't
know I was going to write about
until months later was my barber when I
lived in Thailand and was writing my
first book who is a Burmese refugee and
over the course of many haircuts I
realized had lived a much more
interesting life than a lot of adventure
travelers you read about an outside
magazine and it was probably two years
later that I realized I should probably
write about him because he represented
something very true about Thailand or
the Thai Burmese border where I was and
it was probably two years after that
before I figured out how to write about
him because he had become he'd become a
friend and and I wanted to sort of honor
who he was and so it was it was hard
finding a way in so I guess there's you
know there's different ways to approach
a given travel experience and sometimes
what you think is the obvious one
doesn't make any sense when you sit down
to write it and sometimes you sit down
to write it and suddenly you're writing
something that you had no I know plan on
writing about so that is for you yeah I
mean it's just entirely different I'm a
fiction writer and you know I'm not
looking at people as material
necessarily you know when I'm writing
fiction I'm just playing with language
and the way a songwriter is playing with
the keyboard until a tune emerges or a
painter's moving paint around until an
image emerges
I'm very rarely so schematic that I
would cannibalize a real person from an
encounter that would seem slightly
commercial or capitalist or something
like oh I've met her now I'll put her in
a story so for me you know fiction comes
much more out of conflict and interests
often you know to maybe to answer your
question how do you know if you're onto
something from me it's if I have a
curiosity that won't let me go and I
just want to learn more about it whether
it's venomous snails or the way seeds
are preserved or hibernation I was
talking to Lindsay earlier about that
you know one of my stories just that
called the hunters wife just came out of
an interest I had in hibernation like
what the hell are frogs doing with their
hearts beating you know once a minute in
the middle of the winter all around us
right now
are they dreaming is that even
considered being alive
and then only after you know 20 days of
playing around the sentences well
characters and conflicts start to emerge
up out of that so writing fiction about
different place is a very different kind
of thing I think going back to sort of
the idea of the the men and in Beirut
that you that you met and speaking about
the true story behind something and
that's really really the heart of it for
both of you I was wondering all writers
commonly seek a sense of universality in
their writing and both of you achieved
that very well in your work how do you
kind of balance the local and the global
or the microscope the micro with the
macro how and how can other writers
maybe focus on a specific place on an
even foreign place at times and and
still achieve that sense of of
universality I think that's important
almost an important mission for a travel
writer a nonfiction travel writer
because as a travel writer you're in a
unique position to navigate the space
between news media which is panic driven
you know you're not going to read about
certain parts of the world unless
something blows up there and then the
other pole which is advertising and sort
of tourist images that show us golden or
clear blue waters and empty beaches
which don't exist either
and so we're navigating the middle
ground which is making far-flung parts
of the world seem human and so I guess
one mission or one thing that I find
myself returning to is going to a
faraway place and finding what is
relatable about it or finding what is
essential and human about it even though
it might be culturally different there's
certain things that that one can hold in
common and you used you used Abraham the
Lebanon story as an example I think
using the specific to speak to the
universal I was my mission in that story
was ended up being to write about this
one eccentric man in such a way that his
story said something about the place
that his story was tied into Beirut and
the fact that his the fact that he he
could
physically talked about parts of the
city that had been destroyed by war he
pretended to exist pretend they didn't
exist he took me around the city showing
me only fancy restaurants and beautiful
monuments and stuff and so much of his
Beirut was this sort of this this he was
sort of this Don Quixote figure you know
it's sort of this fantastical the Beirut
that could have been and if you go to
Beirut it's easy to understand that this
could be a fantastic city I mean the
Lebanese people there are so nice and
they're they're very good business
people and but they've been sort of
they've lost out to geography and so it
ended up being that the the universals
of the city were communicated through
this strange man I met named mr. Ibrahim
and that's something I come back to a
lot in in a nonfiction context yeah
that's a much easier question for me as
a fiction writer you know the path to
the Universalist through the individual
and some maybe it was Bernini some
Italian sculptor said the art which is
not a trifle is composed of trifles and
I think what he meant is you know you're
just making thousands and thousands of
little chisel strokes on a piece of
marble and eventually maybe you've made
something transcendent but 99% of your
energy is in the work in the hammering
away and you know that's how I feel
about sentences you know you're working
with these used and abused elements of
everyday life which are words and you're
trying to build something transcendent
out of it and what my students what
young writers whatever age but young in
their careers what they seem to miss is
that they're striving for really big
ideas often the oh love or getting their
heart broken and often big ideas don't
make for compelling narrative and what
does make for compelling narrative is
very very small specific details and
that's you know why I love to leave home
and to learn things about other places
because when you're there you get to see
what what a bakery smells like or
Lindsay took me past an incinerator last
night on the way into town there's a big
incinerator you know and like that's a
smell for Ames Iowa you know that I
won't forget and
that cold you know breath of all that
steam going up into the night that's
that is a way to conjure a place you
know often especially undergraduate
fiction will sometimes involved like I
didn't want to set it anywhere because I
wanted it to be everyplace USA every
town USA but really if you want to write
about every town USA invent the most
specific and unique an idiosyncratic
town you can and eventually the people
there will say something about every
town USA if they're real and specific
enough for me you know I came into
reading because I wanted to be
transported into other lives ultimately
I believe that empathy can be achieved
through fiction and that you know
fiction is a moral thing you you read so
that you are not alone and you read to
believe that human experiences can be
shared and so the more specific a story
really the more engaging it is for me
now thinking along the lines of sort of
Italo Calvino's imagined settings and
invisible cities and that question of
how can we accurately and sort of
artfully navigate the place like between
a place itself and the experience or our
perception of that place so that it
almost in some ways becomes entirely
imaginary something that I think is
interesting and mr. Dora I understand
that obviously with memory while memory
is a big part of understanding place and
I'm sure for someone who travels as much
as you do mr. potts that memory of a
place informs your writing as much as
actually being there so I was I was
wondering what is the the difference
between imagination or sort of the
mindscape and the actual landscape and
how does it to sort of play off of each
other you start you know I don't know
exactly the difference I think that is
what you're always struggling with you
know what is objectivity you know if
you're in Vilnius Lithuania and you've
just fallen in love it looks different
then if you're 3,000 miles away from
home and scared and you know you have a
headache or something although somebody
made a great
there was a great joke at lunch today
about how maybe you're in love and you
have gastroenteritis and those are the
same thing you know we talked about John
Muir at lunch today and that's a perfect
example of somebody like you can go book
all travels in Alaska I think's travels
in Alaska you can see Alaska a thousand
times but it's not quite like seeing it
through the consciousness of John Muir
and that ecstatic bursts of prose and
somebody in love with exclamation points
and leaping from Boulder to Boulder and
you know some people get tired of it but
I don't I just like Oh ecstasy for
20,000 you know pages of John Mira
that's great I'll take it and so you
can't separate of course and I think
it's maybe a fallacy to even suggest
that you could write an objective story
it would feel dead I mean the the eyes
of the person through which you see a
place whether it's a fictional character
or Rolf Potts you know that determines
what you're seeing and that's that's the
joy like I said reading is
transportation and that's what I want to
be I want to be transported into other
worlds and other eyes and other minds
well one reason I kicked that question
to you is that you do an interesting job
in four seasons our row of talking about
different so talking about being new to
a place and how newness makes a place
feel alive it in like old habits you can
actually learn things about your home by
suddenly listening the sirens in Rome or
you know trying to find the screen on a
window that doesn't have try to flush a
toilet or buy bread or buy diapers those
things are challenging if you're in
another country exactly so those are
details I think that you or yeah things
that you brought out very effectively in
that book and those are encouraging
words for someone who wants to go to a
new place and write about those places
because I think sometimes fresh eyes are
as legitimate as the eyes of locals or
the eyes of habit and there's people who
live in New York or Ames or Rio who have
stopped seeing their their own City you
know so just because someone has
invested half a lifetime in a place
doesn't mean that they are an authority
on it because odds are they eat at the
same restaurant every week and they have
stopped seen
own home and with the eyes of a traveler
so one advantage of using travel as a
way to see places including your own
home is that it gives you those fresh
eyes that I think are as important as
deep as deep research and I think you
should one shouldn't do it at the
expense of deep research I did another
chapter in my book is about Australia
and I had a lot of very fresh insights
of what was happening to me at each
moment and what was new about that but I
knew that Australia is a place I was
traveling in Aboriginal parts of
Australia and I know that that's a very
politically loaded thing to write about
in Australia and so I realized that
despite the conclusions I had made and
the things that I had seen in the
fleeting time I was there that I was
gonna have to go back in the writing and
really learn a lot about the history and
the politics of Aboriginal life in
Australia lest it end up being a well
observed but very naive essay so so I
guess there's a balance but but just you
know adding on to what I was observing
about Toni's book about Rome is that
fresh eyes count for a lot and that even
those simple differences can make a
place come alive in writing it's true of
meaning if those of you who like the
novel Lolita I mean those are fresh eyes
on the English language in a sense
because he didn't grow up with all the
patterns and habits and cliches of an
English speaker so that's what I mean by
habitual ization you know and I'm hard
on my students who resort to cliches
because I feel like you know when you
resort to a cliche it's at one small but
significant failure to your work you
know you're sleepwalking through a
sentence and you know I'm interested in
writing because I don't want to
sleepwalk through life I feel like we
have a very very very appallingly brief
time on earth and we're here to see as
much as we can and understand and do as
much good as we can before we're gone
and you know when you go see spider-man
15 which I will do I'm sure you know
you're you know everything that's gonna
happen in that film you know that
structure that pattern is a habit you
know that the white lead will kiss a
white female lead you know four seconds
before the credits and you can predict
everything else that we
happen in there and sometimes it's fine
you're tired you know you had a long day
it's okay to expect the familiar and pay
nine dollars for it but there's also
something to shaking up your life and
you know challenging yourself to see
things in new ways and force yourself
out of the habits whether it's simple
decision as today I'm going to walk a
different route to the Union or you know
today I'm gonna bring my mother into my
dorm you know that changes the way
you've seen familiar things very quickly
you know those little decisions during
the day can really make a difference and
that's what I mean by cliche using
cliches and sentences is a small failure
while we're talking about sort of seeing
all that we can while we're here going
back to that first question about about
origins home has come out up actually
several times in this panel
I was wondering despite all the work
that you do the different countries that
you write about the different places
that you write about sort of what is
what is the tension or is there
attention in the idea of home when you
write about other places or when you
travel to other places and how does home
or the idea of home influence your craft
sure home has changed quite a bit for me
since I had kids seven years ago home is
a real thing for me and it changes
everything about travel not just your
writing you know you feel a little sick
and sad if you're gone for very long and
you feel guilty and home is a lot more
important and fun place to be when you
have children in terms of work you know
often that work I'm drawn to the most is
work that involves some kind of spatial
tension in fiction somebody is somewhere
but they long to be somewhere else you
know you give a character in Milwaukee
lover in Jamaica and suddenly their
spatial tension there's a dialectic set
up between and that's since also between
tropical and walky which is about as
different as you can get but also you
know that somebody there's desire
implicit that somebody longs to be
somewhere else and that's what good
fiction comes out of I think it's desire
you know
longing striving against your current
situation a couple different things came
to mind one was this 1977 New Yorker
article about quittin SIA which somebody
just forwarded to me and I'll probably
misquote it exactly but quit NC a-- is
sort of an affection for a home it's a
spanish word that sort of gives you a
sense of place in the world that by
loving and knowing a specific place then
you have a context to appreciate other
parts in the world and i forget what
they mentioned in that story i'm
thinking that they mentioned like
Konrad's knowledge of london helped him
understand the congo but then I think
he's another second language writer and
so to me I recently got a house in
Kansas and I think that has helped
having an affection for a single place
has helped me interpret other places and
the people that live there the people
who relate to a place that I see is a
foreign place these people relate to it
is home going back again to mr. Ibrahim
you know he is his love he had an insane
love for Beirut and so that and that was
part of his character was tied up into
who he was his home at home the second
half the second thing I thought of is
how much home has changed how living in
Ames Iowa a hundred years ago gave you a
different relationship with place than
living in Ames Iowa now when you can
have Facebook friends all over the place
and you know you're tweeting certain
experiences and you're getting you're
watching a spider-man movie that's said
and you know we're not Gotham City
that's that's Superman
but just our relationship with where we
are in our relationship with place is is
less place-based is this another lunch
conversation that was a really
productive lunch with the idea that you
can you have more images in a day than
you used to see in a lifetime and that
actually were talking about the shardana
plant in Paris the Botanical Gardens and
how in the eighteenth century in the
nineteenth century
you couldn't just fly to South America
and Africa to see what the jungle looked
like and so a lot of French artists
would go to the Botanical Gardens and
see their exotic species and make
paintings a lot of writers would go if
they wanted to describe the jungle
based upon the Botanical Gardens in
Paris we don't have that problem now we
don't have that challenge now and we
might not another example I remember
being in Mongolia a few years ago and my
driver said oh look there's a steppe fox
and where there's a steppe Fox well he
was like two miles away we didn't see
the steppe Fox until it was 200 yards
away well he sees the landscape in a
different way you know we we we see in
an urban sense now and we navigate life
in in a context that's full of people
and things and images whereas someone
who lived a more pastoral life in
Mongolia he'd probably be overwhelmed in
a city but he can see a step-by-step Fox
when it's two miles away so that was the
second thought I had that we are
experiencing home in different ways in
in 2012 than we did in 1982 or 1882 yeah
it's so true that technology in some
ways can get in the way of really
experiencing a place especially if
you're missing somebody back home and
you're on your phone a lot you can go
through a day in Florence and still half
of your whole soul is in Iowa you know
this blessing and a curse all at once
it makes me think what you were just
saying makes me think of this really
interesting writer named Wade Davis who
writes really well about Polynesian
navigators and how you know in American
schools we're just drill that progress
is this curve that sweeps ever upward
and that our lives are so much better
than our grandparents and man our
grandparents lives were so much better
than their great-grandparents it isn't
our toilet paper so soft and isn't it so
great to have OVA kados in January and
those things are a miracle but you know
I remember when we lived in Rome for a
year and you know walking through the
forum you would overhear tour guides say
you know notice how the masonry gets
better the deeper we go that like
literally we've lost a lot of skills in
the in the Pantheon and the roof of the
Pantheon which is the longest still
standing structure with a roof in the
world
there's cements 2,100 years old and that
roof that we still don't understand
exactly how it was mixed you know like
the men women maybe mixing that cement
you know we had skills that we've
totally lost weight Davis writes about
these navigators who would be able to
tell they grow up basically in canoes or
at sea much more than they're on land
and they'd be able to tell if there are
Islands coming even though you couldn't
see them in the naked eye just by the
patterns of waves around them that they
could tell how far away they were from
land and that's how they managed these
unbelievable crossings you know 4000
miles of ocean in an open boat you know
I do get nostalgic for that sometimes
you know my sons I try to teach them
about the weeds around the house but
often I run up against the limits of my
own ignorance you know I'm like I think
this is an invasive species but maybe we
shouldn't pull it I don't know they're
like can we go play Super Mario Brothers
dad Jared Diamond talked about that in
the context of mushrooms in Papua New
Guinea you know that people who live
there knew more than a scientist would
ever know about mushrooms because they
drone up knowing exactly which ones to
eat and which ones not to eat and just
since you mentioned toilet paper the
even the idea that soft toilet paper is
the best way to clean yourself is a
culturally relative statement I mean you
go to India and people use water and if
you say to them why do you use water
that's gross they'll say if you had done
on your face would you wipe it off with
paper or would you wash it off with
water and it's like oh okay so you know
those are the very basic relationships
that travel can completely transform
your relationship with Charmin you know
so I guess it's just another example of
how your home you can see your home
through different lens you know yeah and
then when I was 19 I spent seven months
in Kenya and Tanzania and I remember
coming back and all I really had to
drink there was tea beer or Fanta they
had like very delicious Fanta there and
I came home and a member going into
convenience store and just seeing the
drinks I was like before even monster
energy drinks and redbull took over the
convenience store I'm just like we have
so many drinks in America
ever ever realized why do we need 17
flavors of Gatorade thank you
just one last question before we go to
the audience speaking in the area of
craft and maybe also a little bit about
ethics but just something that we've
touched on for our what are some common
mistakes you find when writers attempt
to write about experience cultural
experiences outside of there around
whether be it through nonfiction or
through fiction what are what are some
ethical problems in that or some
complications that come up and how do
you how do you remain truly faithful to
a place that you're writing about well
that's that's a question that's dogged
travel writing since there's been travel
writing simply because it's harder to
fact-check a story when you can't fly to
someplace we don't have an internet
connection and travel writing has had a
bad and I'm talking about nonfiction
travel writing has had a bad reputation
since the beginning because there's no
way to verify that the tribe of Africans
who had a giant lip that covered their
head in the sunshine existed or the race
of men who hopped round on one leg or
the the giant delicious bean that was as
big as your forearm and tasted like
honey
well that that third one is something
Marco Polo talked about and people made
fun of him for it when he came back but
he was just describing a banana all
right so travel writing has always sort
of existed in the haze of distance and
it's only recently that there's nothing
I write about in my book it's only
recently that you can write about
somebody in Ethiopia or Cambodia or
Paraguay and then they can read what you
wrote and say and call BS on you write
so I think to a bigger extent a lot of
these cross-cultural issues are being
sort of policed in a 2.0 sense you know
collectively we're sort of policing each
other's cultural cultural perception of
each other but how to how to approach it
ethically I guess
beware of expectations and stereotypes
learn how to listen know your
limitations I have severe linguistic
interpretation so I know if I am
communicating with a lot of people in
Cambodia for instance it's probably
going to be Cambodians who can speak
English because I can't speak Cambodian
and that's going to affect the nature of
who I'm talking with and who I get my
information from and I think just sort
of acknowledging complexity and
portraying complexity is important for
the same reason as I said before is that
you're not going to get it through the
news and you're not going to get it
through through tourism advertising and
you know talking about the common
humanity
you know addressing the common humanity
of other places without being too
hippie-dippy and and generalist and
completely bland about it because even
though we do have a lot in common as
humans we obviously have huge cultural
differences that have to be understood
and parsed and confront it and bumped up
against and so I feel like that's
something I don't I guess I don't have a
pat answer I guess it comes in the
effort of being being true to the places
you're trying to experience yeah in
terms of fiction writing you know it's
all a matter of degrees you know I mean
you have to claim a lot of cultural
knowledge just to write us stories that
in your neighbors house you know I mean
there's a lot about that family's
culture that you don't know I just tell
my students to not let the write what
you know advice if you guys all heard
that revise before write what you know
not to let that kill there imagine it
imaginative ambition if you're
interested in writing about violin
making or a finish washerwoman in 1750
you're gonna have to do a lot of work if
you're not a violin maker or you didn't
live in 1750 but that doesn't mean you
can do it I mean I think the effort of
making your work plaza Bowl your
responsibility and if you can convince
readers that this universe is real and
you've only alienated say one in ten
thousand readers then because you've got
a mollusk in the wrong ocean for example
not that I've ever done that
but you know occasionally if you slip on
a detail that's you know that's your
small failure of responsibility but as
long as you're a responsible researcher
I think you should try okay thank you
both so much I'm sure that we've only
skimmed the surface of everything that
these guys want to share with us so I
can open the questions to the audience
now if anybody has any anything pressing
that they they feel they would like to
ask I'm sure yeah I don't know if I use
the adjective deep because I don't
really know what is deeper shallow as a
fiction writer the great joy is that
everything you're curious in about can
eventually be useful to you so yeah one
example I think I'm gonna read a story
tonight called the deep and which is set
in the 1920s you have the deep
interesting and one of the characters in
there speaks often uses very ridiculous
similes and at a garage sale I came
across this book I think it was maybe
1919 very tiny pamphlet and it's like
overuse similes or something like that
and it was a goldmine for me you know it
was like five cents and the paper is all
yellow and falling apart but I wish I
could give you some examples of some
really racist examples in there and you
know misogynist ones but you know it's
all these ones that these cliches that
have now become new again so you know I
use those and put them in the mouth of a
character I guess that's one example
there are a lot of different things you
can do besides just library research I
guess that's what I'm saying I use a
Sears cab right now I'm writing a book
set during World War Two and I use Sears
catalogs a lot and looking
through them just to see like what might
be on a dresser in 1940 or what might be
in a nice chest you know those things
very it's a magical thing that you can
bring those with few keystrokes you can
bring up those images right in front of
your eyes in Boise Idaho where I live
you know I love the idea of using
popular culture instead of academic
culture to to make a place or a time
period come alive I think that's true
I've heard historians say once that if
you want to write about the 1930s and
you're wondering if you understand the
1930s open up in New Yorker and see if
you if the cartoons are funny I mean if
the cartoons aren't funny then you
probably don't understand the 1930s
enough to get those jokes and you
probably need to research a little bit
more about that place I have a friend
actually Gina ocean oh she graduated
from from Iowa State math I think you
had an MA from Iowa State she writes a
lot of stories set in in Eastern Europe
and Russia which she has you know she's
never lived there as an expatriate she's
visited him quite a bit
and we were talking about ways she and I
were talking about ways to get into the
place and I I challenged her to learn a
joke in every place that she went and I
think that there's something if you can
learn a joke because so many jokes are
tied to language or culture or social
expectations that jokes can be an
interesting window into place and so I
think yeah I think there's a lot of
counterintuitive ways to to get to know
a place in a deep way and one great way
is to stay there for a while so it I
think it's hard to beat being in a place
and engage in a place for a long time we
don't always have that option but that's
a that's a great way to to approach it
well you have I have a house but you
have a house and a wife and kids so I'll
let you start
hey I've changed the means and by which
you do your riding that's for sure you
have to be a lot more efficient when you
have two little kids sprinting around
everywhere but no I mean maybe you think
a little differently about a traumatic
situation with a young child in it in
the story certainly maybe I have a
little deeper level of empathy for
parents two characters who are also
parents and they're having to make some
complicated decision in a fictional
situation but no I think I'm very happy
I did it and you know you can still be a
very productive Rider has been Percy you
you know it introduced this panel you
know he's got two kids and is writing
something basically every day so you can
you couldn't get it done yeah
well I mentioned that the idea of quit
in SIA before you know the idea of home
giving you context I think since and it
comes with getting older too I mean who
you are at different points of your life
informs who what you write about but a
lot of what I wrote about early in my
career before I had a home before I had
that quit and see a thing to come back
to there was a lot of fish out of water
type first impression things and I think
now I'm entering more into there's more
context in my writing there's actually
more of myself in my writing I my
writing is getting more personal in some
ways I'm coming into my writing in ways
that it didn't use to and so yeah but I
think that's that's tied in to like very
few 21 year olds own a house and so or
married with kids and so it's tied in to
your age and your life stage situation I
think it's good I think we travel
differently and we add just as we write
differently in different stages of life
and and to just adapt and keep trying
and then yeah I have a lot of respect
for you guys with kids and I have two
nephews and I can't imagine how you can
create time to write but but like you
insinuated it forms your writing you
suddenly understand at a gut level what
it's like to be a parent
for example yeah I mean if you really
want to be productive just get a
mortgage and then suddenly you have to
be perfect
sometimes incentive is good any other
questions
yeah yeah I was on book tour in Germany
once and there my escort she was like oh
there there's one added event we were
gonna take you to tonight so we left
Berlin and like this tiny car
I couldn't our where are we going that's
really dark through these woods and we
come to this gymnasium and inside are a
bunch of teachers all women around
tables in a full circle and there's a
podium and she's like okay now you can
read from your book okay that sounds
terrible you can go to the microphone
and they're still eating their backs to
me there's no introduction like Hello
and I read for a little while like this
very I don't know why I chose this past
about insects in the winter in Alaska
and afterward they get in line I'm like
wow they're all gonna buy copies of my
book and they were teachers who were
looking for accreditation like they had
to go to something in English and so
that I had to sign like 45 forms for
these teachers to show that they came to
my event and then he drive an hour back
in this tiny car I just had my Hotel
Berlin I'm like you know this why I left
that's why I left my home to do this
I have an equivalent story of that
actually of signing books in the
shopping mall of my adopted hometown in
Kansas and how I had done these very
well attended events in New York in
Seattle and there I am sitting in the
mall with a bunch of people who just
don't care at all about my travel book
and then I sort of tried to engage
people and I felt like like a guy
dressed as a chipmunk handing out flyers
to a donut shop on a big Street you know
there's that very deep humiliation that
comes with that actually I was I wasn't
um I wasn't just farting around myself
when I actually in in in the very
postmodern nod to Tony I actually
tweeted one of his quotes the other day
and I tweeted it says the easier and
experience the fainter our sensation of
it becomes complexities Wayne miracles
become unremarkable so I think the
humiliation that comes with travel is a
way of embracing you know being you know
it's a way of of getting past the
superficial comfort level of life and
and getting closer to the edge of
experience and I've had a lot of yeah I
think unless you're being regularly
humiliated you're not traveling hard
enough you know it's a really nice
question ever it's so true in the book
that Ralph briefly mentioned that I
wrote called four seasons in Rome I
finally after about six months I felt
like I was getting Italian a little bit
we would always go to the grocery where
you have to ask for everything
everything's either behind glass in
terms of the meat or it's up on a shelf
behind the grocer so you have to learn
the vocabulary for all this stuff and I
remember I won't we wanted to make
spaghetti and I just needed a can of
tomatoes and I kept asking for pomp Elmo
I wanted sue Cody pomp Elmo which is
grapefruit sauce and a blank and Sue
Cody Pomodoro's tomato sauce I'm like I
want that super t-bone Elmo and the guys
like what the hell we don't have that
like what is this problem flu it I
totally flew it in Italian
I want my grapefruit sauce we might have
time yeah John
yeah those are great questions if there
is the carbon credit the moment at the
gates of heaven Roth is going to sit
away first so I take comfort in that
I beat I beat myself up about that all
the time you know like how can al gore
give this whole important movie and not
once mention how many times he flew to
get it made you know absolutely the one
thing that's very paralyzing though is
living in a state of guilt all the time
and so lately my wife and I are just
trying to acknowledge the things that we
are doing in terms of composting and
biking to work and small decisions and
being realistic about the impact that we
have versus say the United States Army
or you know the Pentagon everyday or
Disney World so yes I feel very
complicated feelings about that and you
have to believe that your work is
exposing enough people to these morally
complicated questions that it's worth it
it's worth it ultimately but I have to
grill it in terms of the fossil fuel
question that's a really good question
you want to talk about the other one or
that one - well I will say traveling
slow is a nice way is is I guess a more
sustainable way to travel in that regard
whereas traveling
taking one flight to Asia and traveling
Overland for a year is gonna be a lot
less impact than your average business
person has you know commuting I mean
train the planes of the new buses really
or the new trains that it's just flying
is a very banal week-to-week thing and
people fly all over the United States
and so I think it's easy to pinpoint
tourist travel but I think business
travel you know it can rack up and I
both flew here can rack up as much
impact and one nice thing about slow
travel too is even now can economically
you'll be going on bus lines and trail
lines and staying in hotels that are
owned locally and and you'll you'll be
learning and reporting back about maybe
ways that some people
live more sustainably as far as finding
a place that you love and being afraid
to write about it that's that's tough
it's a question that comes up a lot
travel writers deal with it a line
remember that movie the beach that
Leonardo DiCaprio movie it was it was a
book before before that it sort of it
deals with that very question of an idea
that well it sort of deals with the idea
that places are spoiled when people show
up that that it's okay to be a tourist
until people who are exactly like you
start showing up and start reminding you
just how awkward and dorky you are in
this beautiful place and that's why I'm
a big proponent of just making it very
very personal and knowing what you love
about places because sure there's
there's a level at which beautiful white
sand beaches or very beautiful stretches
of rainforests or something are run the
risk of being overrun but that comes
sort of in the consumer sense I think if
you travel in such a way that you're
finding personal resonance instead of
general aesthetic resonance in places
then probably the places you fall in
love with are so personal that it's not
really something that you're going to
sell out you know like I've fall in love
with Saline County Kansas having lived
there and I doubt there's gonna be a
tourist crush no matter what I write
about Saline County Kansas so yeah the
great thing about your question is it's
hard to answer definitively you know
it's it's tied up and how we in how we
live these days any other thoughts I
have some some of my closest friends are
once a year they do a pilgrimage to
Belize and fish for permit which is for
a fly fisherman as the ultimate casting
because to permit in your life you've
had a very successful life and they they
are very reluctant for me to ever go
with them for just that reason and I
totally understand that they're like you
know you can't ever write anything about
this and so you know I get that friends
who put like warning rattlesnake signs
all around their favorite fishing holes
in Idaho you know for the same reason
itself I get that proprietary nosov
place for sure
okay well it looks like we're out of
time
thank you so much for sharing my
perspective
