Staying at Home and Travelling to France with Vivian Swift

Would you rather savor the joys of home or travel to France?

With these two books by author/artist Vivian Swift you can do both. They can each be picked up and enjoyed for a long read or just a brief sojourn. But really, they are more of an education and an experience than just books to read.

The first, When Wanderers Cease to Roam, I bought several years ago. It's publication date is 2008. Subtitled A Traveler's Journal of Staying Put, it is Ms. Swift's record, captured in words and watercolors, of coming to rest for a year in a village on the Long Island Sound after ten years of world travel. 

Through the pages of her monthly entries Ms. Swift shares her days and nights, reminisces about her many travels, records the weather, introduces her cats and neighbors, looks to the stars, drinks tea, muses on sweaters and mittens, and finds new uses for her now languishing suitcases. 

I know why I bought this book - I love Ms. Swift's watercolors and illustrations. They express the joy of the every day. Simple lines. Clear colors. All that I strive for in my own sketchbook renderings.

The text is handwritten by the author which would normally put me off, but the words are clearly formed and not at all difficult to read. Her writing is energetic and entertaining. I feel I have stumbled upon one of her secret art journals.

Her collection of teacups

I am looking forward to the colors of autumn 

that Vivian Swift captures here.

---

As enamored as I was with her first book, I was delighted to discover that Ms. Swift has a second book titled Le Road Trip. It has a publication date of 2012 and lucky for us she gave up on staying put. Here is her chronicle of a trip to France with her husband James. In her inimitable style she paints the sites of Paris, Bayeux, the Normandy beaches, Mont Saint-Michel, Chartres (all places I have been), and the villages and towns in Brittany and Bordeaux (haven't made it there yet).

Laundry day in Normandy

Although it is a book about her travels in France it is also a book about the art of travel: the anticipation, comforts and discomforts, ups and downs, wrong turns, dimly lit hotel rooms, and coming home.

It is full of more of her lovely illustrations — cafes, steeples, gardens, and countrysides — and her lively text. But, be warned: this book may prompt your own excursion to Paris and beyond. 

Ooh-là-là! That could be a good thing. 

Les gâteaux

White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World by Geoff Dyer

I like to travel. I like to read books about travel. I want to share another's experiences in foreign places, especially locations that I will likely never get to. It is, as they say, a Wide, Wide World and taking a journey from the comfort of my reading chair without the hassle of luggage, noisy hotel rooms, and trying to decide where to eat lunch is much less stressful. 

My latest armchair adventure has been with author Geoff Dyer. He was just this week a guest at the library for another terrific author event. His book, White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World, was released earlier this month so his appearance in Louisville was one of the first stops on his book tour. Lucky us.

First of all, this book of nine tales is unlike many travel adventures that you might have read. The author states quite plainly that the stories are a mixture of fiction and non-fiction which makes the twists and turns more exciting as there is always a bit of mystery...did this really happen or not?

Geoff Dyer

For instance, in the titular piece, he and his wife (name changed from the real Rebecca to the made-up Jessica) are driving near White Sands National Park in New Mexico and stop to pick up a hitchhiker. All is well, until within minutes the car passes a sign:

WARNING

Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers

Detention Facilities in Area

What happens from there includes much neurotic thinking (I laughed because I could follow every little byway of his fevered brain) and is as spooky as a Twilight Zone episode.  

Mr. Dyer read this chapter as part of his presentation but never did let us know how much of the event was real. Maybe all of it or maybe part was just a figment of his imagination.

It doesn't matter. The writing is excellent and entertaining and funny in a snarky sort of way. I couldn't wait to get home and read more.

So far I have traveled with Mr. Dyer to The Forbidden City in Beijing where he has a mild flirtation with a non-guide tour guide; to Tahiti in search of a Gauguin experience; and, to The Lightning Field, an art installation in the American desert. 

I had him autograph my hardcover copy of his book. He didn't seem to be in any hurry and we had a brief intense chat. He is British (and charming of course). I asked him what writers had influenced him or that he continued to read and he answered: John Berger, Annie Dillard, and Rebecca West.

He especially recommended Ms. West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, her 1200-page classic about Yugoslavia and the Balkans. He promised that if I read the first thousand pages and wanted to give it up to let him know and he would refund my money. (I told you he was charming.) Ms. West was one of the Dead Ladies in Jessa Crispin's book that I wrote about here.

As to Annie Dillard, Mr. Dyer wrote the preface to her collection of essays In Abundance (here) and also includes a quote from her in the front of his book:

The point of going somewhere...is not to see the most spectacular anything. It is simply to see what is there. We are here on the planet only once, and might as well get a feel for the place.

Mr. Dyer has taken her words to heart.

In Which I Apparently Bit Off More Than I Could Chew

On Friday, I had the pillow plumped and my four books piled handily within reach of my reading chair.

A great start to a weekend of armchair travel, right?

Well, I don't know if you have the same experience, but planning reading for a three-day weekend and actually getting any reading done are two quite different things.

In the time available between sleeping and eating, there are blog posts to write each day; a daily walk and recovery from the walk (the recovery sometimes taking longer than the walk - it was a hot weekend); quite a few naps to fit in; a trip to the farmer's market; a cheer raised for the AAA home team at the final baseball game of the season...with a rain delay; and, snacking and attendant cups of tea. The next thing I knew the weekend was over. 

Not to mention that my concentration begins to wander after about 30 minutes of reading and I find myself strolling into the kitchen for a drink of water or just to stare out the window.

I did get one book read - Sum -all 110 pages of it. I made it half-way through another 250-page book - The Phantom Tollbooth - and managed to read a couple of chapters of a third - The Secret Life of the Seine. The fourth book - by Bill Bryson - I didn't even take out of the pile.

I guess progress was made, but just not as much as I had hoped. So I am still chewing, er, reading.

Additions to My Itinerary

I have added two destinations to my travel itinerary - armchair travel that is - for this long weekend.

I am visiting Dictionopolis, the Island of Conclusions (which can only be reached by jumping), and watching out for the demons who ramble about in the Mountains of Ignorance with Milo and Tock in The Phantom Tollbooth. This clever, clever book by Norton Juster was on my Summer Reading List and with summer just about over, I figured I had better hop to it.

Also, I am making a quite unexpected stop in The Afterlife with Sum by David Eagleman. A frequent commenter, Tullik, recommended this after reading my entry on Einstein's Dreams (here) by Alan Lightman. Instead of taking a look at thirty different conceptions of time, Eagleman, a neuroscientist, offers forty tales from the afterlives. It is quite witty and imaginative and unsettling at the same time. 

Now there is the fun of armchair travel - one always has the appropriate outfit for any change in plans.