According to W. Somerset Maugham, “the wise traveller only travels in imagination.”
Recently, a friend told me how much she hated Wei Hui’s new novel, “Marrying Buddha.” I openly admitted that I am not really impressed with her debut, “Shanghai Baby.” It was superficial, period. The buzz–banning and burning–was not worth it.
The author’s promise (or blame the PR that marketed it as the voice of the new China, or the Shanghai scene) felt short. It was all name-dropping, designer goods-loving tart extravaganza. Perhaps, I was expecting too much. Perhaps, I was thinking that I would get an impression of Shanghai, just a bit of Shanghai. Like I always have upon reading Banana Yoshimoto and Haruki Murakami’s short stories, I see Japan. Or just reading Milan Kundera has given me the opportunity to peek into the communist Czech Republic, not to mention the trials and tribulations of an immigrant. And so on and so forth.
You can’t be wrong in books. Take every young German-speaking boy’s childhood favorite, Karl May, who did travel once or twice to the United States but definitely wrote a great deal about Red Indians and the Wild West using his imagination with the help of maps, etc.
Mind-roaming through reading is cheaper. I guess… It also encourages you to dream, to aspire to see the place yourself.
Weeks ago Kurier reported that the museum Louvre received lots of visitors mainly due to the publication of Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code” (”Sakrileg” in german). Honestly, I haven’t read it. And now that it is going to be a movie, the number of people who will be interested to see it will increase. i bet.
This reminds me of “The World According to Garp” by John Irving.
I know that it was made into a movie in 1982. But I am not sure if the readers made their way to Vienna just to see where Franz Grillparzer had lived. The way the character TS Garp made jokes on the poor Viennese writer was harrowingly funny. I asked a few people if they would have his works that I could read. Unfortunately their copies are missing.
One thing that really got me was the author’s reflection on the importance of Vienna in the 20th century. How Garp’s teacher Mr. Tinch, with his stuttering voice, described Vienna as the “real Europe. It was c-c-c-contemplative and artistic. You could sense the sadness and g-g-grandness.”"
Hmmm… Could be funny to do “The World According to Garp” tour.
What do you think?