The Trip to Greece, available on demand, is the fourth in the series starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as pretty much themselves having entertaining conversations over sumptuous meals in picturesque countries. It seemed the perfect escape during a pandemic that has put travel on hold. Yet that very circumstance made me see the shortcomings of the movies, at least as travelogues. The banter and the impersonations were as amusing as always, but this time I missed any indication, other than the visual, of the country they were traveling through. After an early scene in which they give a lift to a man who works in a refugee camp, and get a rare jolt of reality, there were no interactions with locals who weren't waiters or waitresses, and the only time one of these extended beyond the perfunctory, the server was a blonde with a German accent. We didn’t hear once, in the entire movie, a note of Greek music. And one of the pleasures of Greece is – or at least was – hearing nothing but Greek music. It’s a country that comes with its own soundtrack. Perhaps they wanted to avoid the cliché of Zorba, though I could easily picture Coogan dancing to shouts of Opa!
The Greece we were introduced to was the ancient one, as they dutifully visit ruins, and Coogan frequently references the great philosophers. It was like a generic travel article – focusing on the history, ignoring the people, downplaying the present, giving a romanticized, unblemished picture of the place. If only travel articles could be so funny.
That the late afternoon launch of Elon Musk's rocket had to be scratched because of bad weather came as no surprise to anyone who lives in the Sunshine State. Though we were left wondering about the aptitude for space exploration of a man who doesn't understand seasonal weather patterns in Florida.
Someone left the May issue of Travel + Leisure in our lobby library. I picked it up and saw that it contained a story on Thessaloniki by an acclaimed novelist and short story writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker. Turning to the piece, I read the lede:
“The city of Thessaloniki, a busy Aegean seaport in the northeast of Greece, might not be high on most travelers’ must-see list, but I wanted very much to see it. Though the nation’s second-largest city has a rich and underrated cultural history, and the beaches of nearby Halkidiki are known to be spectacular, I was drawn by my family’s history.”
My first question was: How much money did Travel + Leisure spend to send this writer to Greece so it could get writing that resembles an entry in a guidebook? (Minus the two first-person interjections.) My second question was: Why do fiction writers think that they needn’t make an effort when writing travel, that travel writing is, by definition, a vacation, a time to take a break from creative thinking?
It wasn’t always so: Some of the greatest travel writing has been produced by novelists and short story writers: Mark Twain, D.H. Lawrence, Isak Dinesen, V.S. Naipaul, to name just four. In the mid-20th Century, the pages of Holiday were filled with evocative pieces by William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, V.S. Pritchett, Paul Bowles. Travel writing, free from the coming taint of PR, was seen as a worthy endeavor, and a valuable complement to fiction.
In the past, Travel + Leisure has sent the novelist Gary Shteyngart on trips, the results of which have frequently landed in The Best American Travel Writing anthologies. But he is a sparkling exception to the rule that most contemporary fiction writers take it easy when writing travel, viewing it as a frivolous, inferior genre not worthy of their talents. They’re in it only for the free - actually, paid - vacations. They get away with it because the glossy magazines no longer care about good writing, turning their focus now almost entirely to advertising – and survival. When they eventually perish, it’s going to be hard – even for freelance travel writers – to mourn their demise.
There’s been a stream of fine books by immigrants about their experiences in the U.S. (memoirs, novels, essays) but no corresponding flow of books by Americans about their experiences abroad. Yes, we’re a country of immigrants, not travelers. But the imbalance strikes me as the result of self-absorption – Enough about us. What do you think about us? – and laziness. We’re OK with the foreign when it comes to our shores, but – even as readers apparently – we’re not going to go out and discover it for ourselves.
Portugal has announced that it is going to reopen to tourists on June 6, which, interestingly, is the anniversary of D-Day.
For a travel writer who wasn't really traveling, it's kind of nice not to be asked, "So where's your next trip?"