Book Review: THE WRITER'S JOURNEY: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE LITERARY GREATS

Title: The Writer's Journey: In the Footsteps of the Literary Greats

Author: Travis Elborough

Publisher: White Lion Publishing

Pages: 343

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

I loved the premise of this book. The role of the journey and its potential for amassing research about character, description and settings alike as well as its potential for offering a fresh perspective.

Many of the writers included in these pages have uncovered a new story or book, or even a new career as a writer, from their journeys.

Of course, it’s written from a Western lens, so the author tells us about the dangers of dying of dysentery, cholera etc. Also, most of the writers are either American or European.

Incidentally, JK Rowling, the only living author, among deceased writers, most of whom lived in earlier centuries, was out of place. The criteria for choosing authors to feature in the book remains unclear.

The layout of the book is designed like a tabloid, with a long headline, mostly alliterative, and a sketch of the writer’s face in monochrome. Below this masthead are small icons of the mode of transportation employed by the writer, followed by the text in double column. The text is interspersed with maps, aerial photos of the location etc.

The writers are included in alphabetical order, which led to a sense of disconnect between the chapters.

The purpose behind each writer’s journey is varied:

Holiday/Outing: Hans Christian Andersen, Bram Stoker, Virginia Woolf

Son’s education: Maya Angelou

Sent by a publication: WH Auden and Christopher Isherwood, Zora Neale Hurston

Research: Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens

Write a travel book: Graham Greene

Work: Joseph Conrad, Herman Melville, JK Rowling

Recuperation: Jane Austen, Elizabeth Bishop, Gustave Flaubert, Federico Garcia Lorca

Escaping from danger: James Baldwin

To improve his character: Charles Baudelaire

Travel and adventure: Basho aka Matsuo Kinsaku, Jack Kerouac, Katherine Mansfield

 

The reasons I found most interesting were those of:

Lewis Carroll: went to Russia to build bridges with the Eastern Orthodox Church

Arthur Conan Doyle: went to Switzerland to get an idea for killing the character of Sherlock Holmes.

F Scott Fitzgerald: went to Paris because the cost of living was cheaper there than in the US.

Jack London: went to the Yukon to take advantage of the Gold rush.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery: took on the Transcontinental Flying Race.

Sam Selvon: went to London to fulfil his literary ambitions. 

The book doesn’t really spell out how the location led to the writing, just that here’s place A which was written about in book B. I would have liked something more detailed.

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)