Before tourism came travel; and before travel, exploration. A sense of wonder had accompanied journeys along the lip of the unknown, as the Victorian pathfinder was often an amateur scientist, required to bring home a trunkful of fossils. Today, of course, travel is merely an extension of the leisure industry. The first thing we see as we embark on our holidays is a filth of our own making (resort hotel seepage, takeaway detritus). Paul Bowles, himself no armchair excursionist, bemoaned the creeping industrialisation of travel — its translation into tourism — and what he called ‘the 20th century’s gangrene’, by which he meant, broadly, modernity.
This superb collection of his travel journalism takes us back to the days of exploration, when the going was rough. It provides an absorbing record of the American novelist’s love of Islamic North Africa and the sand-dwelling peoples of the Sahara, as well as Sri Lanka and the unjustly maligned Madeira. The sublime Victorian presumption that a harsh nomadic life makes a better person was shared to a degree by Bowles. Yet he was no Wilfred Thesiger figure, contemptuous of democracy, human rights or women. He learned some Arabic but baulked at wearing Arab fancy dress (Brooks Brothers suits were preferred to Wilfred of Arabia-style flowing headcloths).
An elusive, slyly watchful individual, Bowles combined a scholarly knowledge of North African custom and culture with slightly bitchy observation and a witty, anecdotal concision. In ‘The Rif, To Music’, a bravura essay, he relates his difficulties in making a series of recordings of Moroccan music in 1960. Amid the matchless descriptions of desert landscape are droll flights of humour and self-deprecation. Absurdly, Bowles was obliged to consume supplies of ‘piping hot Pepsi Cola’ as he lugged recording equipment across the Atlas mountains.
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