Travel writing has long been recognized as a separate literary genre, and continues to be so – witness the crowded travel shelves in our bookshops with its Bill Brysons, Stuart Maconies, Nicolas Cranes, et al. Traditionally, travel writing told us about people and places in (mostly) foreign countries. Maybe travel writing also tells us something about ourselves. Professors Bendixen and Hamera, editors of this Cambridge Companion, clearly think so:
Travel writing has always been linked intimately with the construction of American identity. These specially commissioned essays … focus on the role played by travel writing in the definition and formation of national identity.
Immediately I wonder whether “these specially commissioned” essays that “examine a wide range of responses to the problems posed by landscapes found both at home and abroad” represent a peculiarly “American” experience – the Frontier Syndrome, the car culture, migration narratives, etc. – of a young state struggling to find a common ground to bind together disparate immigrant groups. More seriously I wonder how much the editor's agenda has determined the selection and character of the book's content. Yet though travel writing has a long history – Thomas Harriott's A Brief History and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588) is the first title listed in this book's chronology – travel literature as a subject of academic study is a new field. So, whatever our reservations, the debate has opened and we welcome this stimulating collection of essays, a timely follow‐up to the Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing (Hulme and Young, 2002). Apart from online journalist Terry Caesar, all fourteen contributors are university academics, including six professors and three associate professors. The quality of the research and the excellence of the writing are, therefore, of a high order.
Like other Cambridge Companions – the endpapers list 113 author companions and 72 “topic” companions – this book contains essays, 14 of them averaging 17 pages. The introductory essay looks at the travel book and the construction of American identity. Five essays follow under the heading “Confronting the American landscape”. They cover American travel writing in the pre‐revolutionary era, the role of landscape in American travel writing, and three major regions – the Hudson and Erie area of north eastern USA; the Mississippi River “as site and symbol”; and the Southwest. The American abroad is considered in Part Two, namely American travel books about Europe before the US Civil War; Americans in Europe from the time of Henry James; and Americans in the Holy Land, Israel and Palestine; Americans in the “large world beyond the Pacific coast”; and Americans in Latin America. The final part, Social Scenes and American Sites, has essays on African American travel literature; American women and travel writing; and late twentieth‐century American travel literature.
In this last, “Driving that highway to consciousness”, there are accounts of The Beats and in particular the influence of Jack Kerouac (On the Road); The 1960s: Motorcycles, Gonzo Journalism, and the Art of Self featuring Ken Kesey (of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest fame), Tom Wolfe (The Electric Kool‐Aid Acid Test), Hunter S. Thompson (e.g. Hell's Angels and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), Robert Persig (Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance), and Joan Didion (Play It as It Lays); The Road and Nostalgia covers the more traditional genre reflected in the work of John Steinbeck (e.g. Travels with Charley: In Search of America), Larry McMurtry (Road), William Least Heat‐Moon (Blue Highway), and Bill Bryson (A Walk in the Woods); and finally come those Girls on the Road, Chelsea Cain (Dharma Girls) and Beverley Donofrio (e.g. Riding in Cars with Boys).
Important to all such evolutionary‐based accounts is a chronology and the one provided here is substantial. It could have been better presented, as the right hand column of authors and titles of important travel books is cramped, while the left hand column of world events is empty by comparison, but a substantial number of travel writers and their major works are listed. The years 1519/1521 (Hernando Cortez's conquest of the Aztecs) to 2006 (Jeff Biggers' In the Sierra Madre) are covered in 35 pages.
Each chapter carries its own notes and references, though there is, in addition, a useful end‐of‐book list of Further Reading (“highly selective and represents only a fraction of the good scholarship available on travel and travel writing”). Apart from anthologies, the division of the list mirrors the chapters. The index, while useful, is selective, omitting many of the titles mentioned in the text. Although bibliographical details of some of the significant works of American travel writing featured in the text are given in the notes to the chapters (but not all the titles mentioned are given publishing details and some have only reprint dates), I would have welcomed a composite bibliography at the conclusion of the book in addition to the Further Reading of critical works. This would save a fair bit of hunting around to find publishing details.
This is a stimulating and informative work that covers much new ground: it has certainly got me thinking and I now have a long list of titles to seek out. Apart from the book's value to literature and travel studies, students of North American history will also find this book useful.
