The Cambridge Companion to American Travel Writing. Alfred Bendixen and Judith Hamera, eds. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 314 pp.
The curious itinerant knows how little exists by way of travel literature, particularly books that may be used as textbooks in a travel-writing class. Although by no means comprehensive, a feat that would be difficult to achieve, The Cambridge Companion to American Travel Writing is a major milestone. The book takes readers on an odyssey around the world by recording and analyzing journeys undertaken mainly by Americans over the centuries, using various modes of transportation and recorded in differing political, social, and cultural contexts.
The book is organized into three sections: (1) Confronting the American Landscape; (2) Americans Abroad; and (3) Social Scenes and American Sites. The thirteen chapters deal primarily with nonfiction narratives while frequently referencing fiction about travel. The editors concede that travel writing is frequently at the intersection of fact and fiction, and that the writer may take many different disciplinary approaches to travel writing—historical, journalistic, and scientific. The book’s authors have gathered information from works of travel writers that range from the scholarly and professional, to the literary and autobiographical.
The various writers in this volume classify travel writing into different genres. Writing about the origins of American travel writing, Philip Gould observes that mapping America for potential settlers, political, religious, or scientific reasons were the driving forces for travel writing in the eighteenth-century British America, although the literary form existed as well. Frontier travel narrative also prevalent at this time tried to observe Native American culture and make this comprehensible to others. A prime example of promotional travel writing, Gould observes, is Benjamin Franklin’s famous autobiography, composed when Franklin was in England, and in which Franklin paints a picture of Philadelphia as a cosmopolitan city full of opportunities.
The Companion also provides a wealth of travel writings in nineteenth-century America authored both by British and American writers who were attracted by technological progress, opportunities to explore, the beauty of the landscape, and modes of transportation. The book focuses on selected travel writings about the Eastern United States from New York to Niagara; the Mississippi River; and the Southwest. Christopher Mulvey notes that New York was admired as an urban city and a technological wonder by British writers, who compared it to the coal smoke-covered cities of England.
There also are frequent references to the ways that changing modes of transportation changed travel literature. For example, horse-drawn canal boats graced the 363-mile-long Erie Canal, completed in 1825, and transformed villages along the way into cities. As the Erie Railroad construction began in 1936, Mulvey observes that interest in the Erie Canal began to fade. Martin Padget’s chapter on the Southwest notes that adventures in the rather Wild West were milder by the 1880s after the advent of the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe transcontinental railroads. Niagara evoked poetry and also gave rise to the guidebook phenomenon, with volumes focusing on Niagara alone, thus attracting the tourist and not just the explorer.
Thomas Ruys Smith, writing on travel writings about the Mississippi River, observes that writers have long been impressed by the history, transportation, and even the possibilities of finding a passage to India as they explored the waters of North America’s longest waterway. Smith also provides examples of the differing perceptions of travel writers. For example, Mark Twain, who grew up by the Mississippi and worked as a steamboat pilot, drew inspiration from the river, placing it firmly in the literary world. On the other hand, a disappointed Charles Dickens called the great river “liquid mud,” among other epithets.
Editors Alfred Bendixen and Judith Hamera, both of Texas A&M, state that, “travel and the construction of American identity are intimately linked. This connection undergirds commonplace descriptions of America as a nation of immigrants and a restless populace on the move.” The section on Americans abroad best explains the notion that travel was firmly rooted in sentiments of nationalism, making Americans ambivalent about foreign travel. While nationalism kept some from going abroad, others—sons and daughters of immigrants—wanted to explore their previous “home.” And yet others emphasized that travel was worthwhile only if it made you appreciate your present home country even more. The post-Civil War years appear to have provided more fertile ground for travelers writing about Europe. Although this section focuses primarily on Europe, two chapters have been included on travels elsewhere. Writing about travel writing pertaining to South America, Terry Caesar says, “To this day, typical American responses to the continent continue to take place against a vast ignorance about its histories, languages, indigenous populations, political systems, and even the geographical locations of its various countries.”
The section labeled as Social Scenes and American Sites appears as an afterthought, apparently added to include ethnic and racial diversity. That said, what stands out in this section is Virginia Smith’s essay on African American travel writing, which throws light on sociopolitical writings speaking for emancipation from colonization and slavery. African American travelers also write about dreaming of returning to Africa, their “home.”
While this anthology provides an in-depth analysis of the antebellum and post-bellum travel literature, it stops short of modern travel. Although reference is made to recent writers such as Thomas Friedman (From Beirut to Jerusalem, 1990) and Frances Mayes (Under the Tuscan Sun, 1997), the book leaves out today’s American jet-setters, mingling with global citizens in international airports and going on trips to China, India and other parts of Asia, and regions beyond the West. Including newspaper and magazine travel writings, in addition to that found in books, might help bridge some gaps. Overall, though, the editors and authors are to be commended for collecting works that can serve as either a textbook or a reference book in a travel-writing class.
SANDHYA RAO
Texas State University-San Marcos