Small book with big ambitions

Title: The Art of Travel
Author: Alain de Botton
Publisher: Penguin

3/5

"Vacation" and "travel" have become so synonymous that in order to separate these words, we had to glue two others together to make "staycation". The question of why we feel this urge to spend our free time somewhere, anywhere but here, is at the heart of Alain de Botton's nerdy but entertaining book, "The Art of Travel".

Yes, nerdy. You will read few books so proudly, unashamedly in-your-face intellectual as "The Art of Travel". Mr De Botton is a social geologist, and to explain his take on questions such as why we are drawn to the exotic, to the countryside or to the monumental, he digs into the history of literature, of art and philosophy, and brings up parables drawn from the lives of Gustave Flaubert, William Wordsworth or Edmund Burke to illustrate his point.

This is a little book with big ambitions. In a series of essays on our motives for travelling, what we do when we arrive at our destination, and how it makes us feel, Mr De Botton trawls the lives and works of these classic authors and artists to try to explain first, why we are so often unhappy in our travels, and second, how we can become better travelers.

Despite such lofty goals, ponderous stuffiness is fended off--if only just--by a whimsical turn of phrase; Birds in Barbados "career through the air in matinal excitement" he says, going to to note the "democratic scruffiness [of] street furniture" in Amsterdam, and elsewhere he remarks that "man seems merely dust postponed" in the face of the bleak majesty of the Sinai.

Less successful is Mr De Botton's attempt to bolt his own travel experiences onto his exploration of universal themes. For example, he inserts an anecdote on his delight in the "neighborliness" of the u and i in the Dutch word "Uitgang" (Exit) into a description of Flaubert's travels in Egypt. In such cases, it seems a stretch to equate his experiences with the lives of the greats, or else he seems to be pushing too hard to make events fit whatever point he is trying to make.

The other limitation of Mr De Botton's work is his narrow definition of "travel". I started reading "The Art of Travel" after returning home from visiting relatives in Canada, and found it silent on the themes that mattered to me at the time, aspects of travel like "leaving loved ones behind". I finished it during a business trip to the Middle East, and again Mr De Botton had little to say to me. Mr De Botton's homilies on how to enjoy architecture or museums are nicely argued, but how about gastronomic travel? Shopping travel? "The Art of the Sightseeing Holiday" might have been a more accurate, though admittedly less catchy title.

Yet this is a book that rewards perseverance. I find myself returning again and again to Mr De Botton's themes, holding them up and examining them from each angle, trying to find what I believe. Strip away the ostentatious wordiness and awkward personal anecdotes, and you are left with some though-provoking insights, perhaps the greatest of which is that "vacations" and "travel" need not be the same.

Rather, in the words of Nietzsche, the key is to be the kind of person who "know how to manage their experiences ... who know how to make much of little". You might try starting with this little book.