BootsnAll Travel Community

EDITED: Because my first post didn't make any sense. Whoops.

RE: http://www.bootsnall.com/articles/06-01/borderland-china-and-pakistan.html

So much of this is so good, especially the level of detail, which is why it's annoying to the point of distraction when the author finds it necessary to inject himself or his opinion when it's not needed or wanted.

quote:

I decided that if I had the chance, I would have sex with this girl.

Really? A 16-year-old impoverished "shoeless" girl in a border town, just before you leave her country? You admit to being economically privileged relative to the people here living a "hard rural life". As a reader, I wonder if I can trust you right from the start.

quote:

They looked stupid, like two rednecks trying to travel. I didn't want to get stuck with them. I knew they would drag me down.

If you say so...

quote:

Moments later, I fell asleep and had a powerful erotic dream.

And I care why?

quote:

A fancy Land Rover drove by and British people got out and take same photograph I just did. They were wearing khaki pants with dozens of pockets, photo vests and hiking boots.

"What's up?" I said.

They ignored me.

There is something about people who drive luxury off road vehicles in places where everyone is poor. There is snobbery involved. There is a culture to this class of people: BBC World Service, British colonies, NGO organizations, colonial African administrators. This is a strata of people cruise around on the backs of the worlds poor. Tinted windows, air conditioning. Everytime I saw these high rollers, I hated them more.

Don't tell me what I'm supposed to think of "people driving luxury off road vehicles in places where everyone is poor". I'm capable of drawing my own conclusions. There is a way to communicate these kind of ideas without using a jackhammer.

Like I said, it's a shame. Because so much of this is so good.

NTFT has a point, but I don’t necessarily think that injecting yourself in the story is always bad. It’s more a question of style and purpose. In this story, some of the injection seems out of place.

An example: Ask yourself what purpose the “erotic dream” line has. The only possible purpose is to shock the reader. It reveals nothing about the place, and not even much about you. You don’t even tell us what it was about!

The same goes for the line about the 16-year-old. About all it tells me is that you’re lecherous. That’s fine – that’s definitely not a judgment. But where does that fit in the context of the story? What is the relevance? If you did end up having sex with her, and you’re writing some sort of psychological brain-bender about a Jewish-American traveler who tours Third World countries to screw impoverished Muslim girls, well, then there’s a story. Probably a damn good story. But it doesn’t really fit into this piece.

All that said, your stories are always worth reading, this one included. The only flaw here is that it lacks focus. A good exercise for you, I think, would be to reread each story with one question in mind with respect to EVERY single sentence: What purpose does this line serve? What purpose does this word serve? How does this contribute to the overall theme, the overall point, the message that I’m trying to convey?

The same exercise, incidentally, would be useful for some of your "non shocking" descriptions. As I've told you before, you're good, but sometimes you say far too much (both in the sense of telling the reader what to think, and in overdescribing things).

You’ve got a lot of skills, but more focus would make you an even better writer.

Exactly, jv. Thank you for saying what I meant to say....but failed.

There's nothing wrong with an author having a presence in a piece, as long as it serves a purpose. When it (repeatedly) is there for no reason other than to call attention to the writer, it's distracting and annoying. And when the writing is otherwise very good, especially when the writing is otherwise very good, it's aggravating.

I so agree with what has been said so far. Writing so as to let people make their own minds up, i.e. reading between the lines, should be the approach taken. Your view is made quite clear without having to state it. Take a real master of writing about e.g. colonialism, such as Evelyn Waugh. I doubt very much you'd agree with one word of his view. But he makes his view so plain without once actually stating it because he is a master at it. You can only learn from the masters.
I think the same criticisms apply to your piece about Athens (easily the worst of your offerings, in my opinion). At the end of it all I was asking myself, what is the point of half of it? And I 'm starting to agree with Leif that there's too much of Barukh the badass (this is not a personal slight, this is a comment on your writing), and not enough of other factors in your writing.
A writer of your calibre should remove all the jarring notes. Nobody is shocked by jarring notes these days, they are, as NTFT says, irritated by them. If you aim to shock, you haven't succeeded. If you aim to irritate, then you can't expect people to take your writing seriously.

I saw a short version of this article that didn't make sense, but this longer one is really nice. I *almost* could use it for my English class here, but...the above-mentioned situation prevents me.

However, I have a different take on it. Surprising, because I'm uber squeamish and moralistic as other posters and Barukh himself could attest. B-dawg (as he's been referred to) writes as if it's part of a larger work. Maybe it is. His character is not irrelevant, and not altogether unique which is an important point. His travel articles aren't the same flavor as the 'boating in Boracay' type (Hello from the Philippines, by the way!)

I also got the opposite feeling about the last part with the SUV. I like the way that he just states it. I didn't feel the jackhammer.

Reading these as part of a novel *should* completely change expectations and minimize the stumbling blocks. My opinion. As always.

Even worse if it's part of a novel. There are three or four traps our friend Mr. B is falling into when it comes to that art form which are very, very difficult indeed to get right, which makes me think that it is not part of a bigger thing, so forgive me Barukh if it wasn't your intention to write a novel along the lines of your travel stories
a) make your central character if not likeable, at least someone you can identify with. And a little less cardboard cut-out badass, frankly. More complicated motives than the apparent contradiction between his hatred of the new colonialism and his own colonialist attitude towards the girl he wishes to conquer. (No, I'm not flaming, I'm talking about writing novels). Fine, as jv says, if it's the story of a Jewish-American trying to get his rocks off with underprivileged girls over the world (the theme of power, abuse of it, and hypocricy looms large in this possibility, the fact that the main character is much the same as the 'new colonialists' he affects to despise), but then concentrate on that and write it as fiction.
b) otherwise you will end up with an eight-headed or nine-headed hydra, i.e. a novel that doesn't flow because it keeps going off in lots of different directions without actually tying them together, confusing or irritating the reader. Perfectly okay in a blog, (as long as the blog has lots of sections) because blogs are personal 'diaries' and usually aren't pretending to be great works of art. But I suspect that Barukh wants to be a great writer, and this is not great art. Everyone has done the deconstructionist thing and it is old hat.
c) a good angry novel does not use the jackhammer approach as it alienates the reader. Far more subversive to put the message across as if it were an iron fist in a velvet glove. Readers are not stupid and do not need to be bullied or patronised. Once again, the masters really know how avoid doing that. Why do you think so many 'socially conscious' novels about angry men or women doing whatever wherever don't last for longer than several years, if anyone is foolish enough to publish them in the first place?
d)Good writing by itself doth not maketh a great novel. Coupled with that you need stamina, craft and graft (especially that -I think it was Graham Greene who once said that a novel was 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration.) It's actually lazy writing to use the jackhammer approach, worse still if you resort to neo-colonialist cliches - think about how much harder it is to put your message across subversively and yet simply.