Erik on Mary Morris

My son, visiting from the U.S., mentioned that he thought the part of the blog where I quoted students was very good, which reminded me I needed to do more of that. So here is most of Erik Hajek's essay from Week Three; he and Parker are currently on a sidetrip to Mongolia - not Inner Mongolia, which is part of China, but Outer Mongolia, a separate country. Erik, a fine writer, begins by discussing Wall to Wall: From Beijing to Berlin by Mary Morris:

Wall to Wall is exactly the kind of book I was looking forward to when the class in travel writing was announced. Fussell’s Abroad is not a travel book but rather a book about travel books; Morris, more interesting and casual but perhaps less analytical than Fussell, writes a story of dilemmas, emotions, and history, intertwined and connected. Morris’s tone is consistently both lonely and contemplative.[After visiting Tolstoy's home,] she writes, “As I roamed from room to room, pausing to examine a book left open, a pair of spectacles on a desk, I thought how unhappy Tolstoy was here, how unhappy his family became.” From this passage and most others, it can be inferred that Morris is usually alone. Whether she’s browsing Tolstoy’s house, taking the train, or even in the company of others, she tends not to fit in. Even though she is pregnant because of him, her boyfriend is still called by her “my companion," the intimacy gone. Her aloneness many times translates into loneliness, and it adds a slightly unsettling mood that makes me uncomfortable.

Continuing in the same passage, [as Morris wanders through] Leo Tolstoy’s house alone, she happens upon books, spectacles, and other seemingly unimportant objects. Yet she has a sharp eye and hardly fails to notice and contemplate even the smallest aspect of where she is; while in Mongolia, she notices that “broad-faced Mongolian women dusted the tracks with colorful green or purple feather dusters. Some of the women wore hats or white scarves tied around their heads…On the fringes of one of the world’s great deserts, scarred with hundreds of miles of sand-laden track, this feather dusting seemed rather futile and I found myself amused at what appeared to be some Soviet-contrived scheme to ensure full employment” (82). Details don’t escape her, and thus she is free to be amused, angered, or depressed by what she notices. Her recognition of the little things evokes a certain intimacy with the particular culture, something only available to those who can see beyond the tourist traps, and she allows us a glimpse of this intimacy.

Continuing [to comment on] the original passage, Morris reflects on the unhappiness of Tolstoy and his family. Only one who studied history, at least the history of Tolstoy, but history nonetheless, would know that. Sometimes Morris seems to know the history at that point in the story, as here with Tolstoy, in which case it affects her thinking. Sometimes the history seems added in later, such as [when she recounts] the history of the Mongols or [discusses] the Great Wall, and then connections are made between the past and the present.... In either case, while she doesn’t [draw on] a particularly deep knowledge of literature, she does have an entrenched familiarity and knowledge of history that colors her narration. Comparing the past with her present, she is able to expand her experiences into something more profound...