I had just started my latest attempt at book writing,
limiting my reading and blogging to one book a week, when I picked up this book
by Jenny Diski on an impulse from the local Oxfam shop. It was only £2.99,
which was part of the reason (though Oxfam books are rarely more expensive than
that), and another blogger had mentioned Diski positively quite recently which
was another piece of the strange puzzle that is my book buying disease. I had
also, some time ago, encountered Diski’s name when researching books about the
Arctic and had flagged one of her books for future reading (Skating to
Antarctica, specifically. Yes, I do know that is quite the other side of the
planet). I had no real idea what this book was about, yet when I was mooching
about the house feeling a little sorry for myself I picked it up thinking I’d
read a few pages to get a feel for it and then next thing you know I’d put all
my other books to one side and made this my one book of the week. Or the quarter,
at least.
Diski is a travel writer, and this book explores three
journeys she undertook: one to New Zealand, one in Somerset and one to Lapland.
Yet whilst the structure of the book is created around these journeys, this is
very much an exploration of Diski’s desire to keep still. This seems a crazy premise for someone who is
a travel writer, though it also seems that becoming a travel writer is
something that mystifies Diski and results, largely, from her more pressing
inability to say no. What follows is a strange kind of meditation on the idea
of stillness, the guilt at not wanting to leave the house (or even her bed
necessarily), the social pressure to enjoy activities such as walking or going out in general, the internal and,
sometimes, external conflicts that arise and the difficulty in being honest. It
is also very amusing, very truth-filled and wry. What Diski does or doesn’t
explain about travel is neither here nor there, but her musings are absorbing,
like here:
“What people always
say about being alone for long periods is some variation on the theme of the
immense and unimagined difficulties of having to confront oneself, a concealed
self which lurks unnoticed below the requirements of everyday sociability.
Coming face to face with yourself, is how they describe it. ‘You really find
out who you are’, they say with a look of agonisingly acquired wisdom, implying
an inevitable dark night of the soul. What I have discovered during these
periods of being alone for as long as possible, is that I am extremely good at
passing the time, and taking pleasure in passing the time, reading, idling and
pottering, rarely bored, hardly ever restless, sometimes miserable, often
dissatisfied with myself and the world, without finding out an iota more than
that about who I am, because that is pretty much what I’m like in company too.
The agony of solitude passes me by, until, because social guilt and
self-analysis are never far away, the lack of agony at being with myself become
an agony of lack of self.”
It is a book very heavily seated in introspection, the
journeys being as much about Diski’s own response to her environment as the
environment itself. Not such much travel writing as a woman writing about
herself travelling. And it works. It is insightful and amusing, it is wise, it
is challenging in the way watching anyone doing mental gymnastics whilst being
rigidly honest can only be. There were times when reading this book that I felt
like I was reading my own thoughts expressed more articulately and with greater
insight and humility. It had such a familiarity about it, like listening to the
rambling of your own thoughts in a dead moment, which was exactly the space I
happened to be in at the time of reading it.
For the purists who like a travel writer to write about
travel, there is still plenty of travel in this book. But what makes it so
interesting is the intensity of reluctance Diski brings to the whole experience
“nothing will persuade me that the mere
fact of being in a place is enough in itself to justify the effort of getting
out of bed to become a tourist, or even a traveller” Diski says, and there
is so much truth in that little statement, the reminder that everything we
experience is happening exactly where we are right now and we don’t really need
to go anywhere to find it, or prove ourselves to anyone. And if this book tells
us anything it’s that we can be exactly who we are, without the need to take
part or live up to a certain standard. Exactly what I needed to read.
What I didn’t need, however, was the extraordinary list of books
she took away with her to Somerset, listed on pages 77 and 78 and from which I
have lifted a shortlist of about 5 or 6 I want to read for myself. Including
Montaigne, who I think has heavily influenced this book but whom I know too
little about to truly appreciate the connection. And I don’t have to either. In
fact it is perfectly fine if I never read Montaigne, though I think I will in
the end.
I can’t express here how much I enjoyed this book. It was a
breath of stale bedroom air, beckoning me to sleep in. It won’t quash my love
of travelling, unlike Diski I love walking and experiencing new places. But in
many respects she articulated, with great clarity, the way my mind has been
turning. It may have been a stroke of serendipity, but I don’t care. I loved
it.
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