Getting Festive While Flying Solo

Or, a Glow-Paint, Reggae Music 4th of July

Holidays are a time for family and friends, reliving old traditions and enjoying the comforts of familiarity. Unfortunately, if you happen to be in a foreign country, especially one that doesn't celebrate that holiday at all, holidays can bring on a bout of loneliness and longing for home. Luckily, for the solo traveler, holidays are a great way to connect with fellow adventurers, so that you can celebrate your own traditions together while exploring somewhere new! And, hopefully, make some great friends in the process.

A few summers ago I was backpacking around South East Asia, and found myself in Ko Phangan, Thailand, for the 4th of July. This is an important holiday in my family; aunts, uncles, cousins, family friends, neighbors--you name it!--head to my grandmother's house by the seaside for a weekend of fireworks, cookouts, late night drinks, and, of course, red, white and blue. It's the one time a year that the whole family gets together, and has come to symbolize for me the importance of unity--as a family, and as a nation.

So I was a little disappointed to miss out on the festivities. Granted, I was at least at the seaside--a gorgeous, palm-tree lined, white-sanded seaside, bordered by rocky cliff faces covered in jungle. Not bad. But still, I was missing my New England roots. So, on the 4th, I put on a red and white shirt and my trusty blue sweat bandana (it was Thailand, in July, ok? Things got sweaty.) And you know what? Throughout the day, I noticed other American tourists doing the same thing, and when i heard an American accent, I wished them "Happy 4th of July!" As a fairly shy person, I wouldn't have usually approached random travelers, but hey, we needed to celebrate!

That night, I headed to my favorite bar on the island, an open-air hut with old-school reggae music, black lights hung up and free neon paint, so you could decorate the tables, chairs, walls, and yourself. And there I saw several of the Americans that I had spoken to earlier, replicating the fireworks at home with the brightly colored, glowing splatterings of paint! We weren't trying to be obnoxious Americans, and luckily everyone involved had the respect and taste not to come across that way; but it felt great to be acknowledging this holiday that was special to us--especially because we were abroad.

If you find yourself far from home on a special day, don't let it get you down! Take the initiative to use the holiday to connect with other people who hold it dear. In many countries, the American embassy holds celebrations for special days such as the 4th of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Yom Kippur. And in large cities, upscale chain hotels such as the Hilton, Ritz-Carlton, Hyatt, etc. often host holiday celebrations for their guests that anyone can attend for a fee. If you're staying in a hostel, gather other backpackers to celebrate with you, regardless of nationality! If there is a specific tradition in your family, try and put together a make-shift recreation!

As always with traveling, safety and respect are the name of the game when celebrating abroad. Be sure that your festivities are not frowned upon in your host country. And especially for Americans, be extremely aware of your surroundings and company before advertising your foreign nationality. That said, remember that holidays, regardless of what they celebrate, are all about coming together and commemorating something special, so use them as a chance to share your traditions with others, learn about new customs, make friends, and have fun!

There's a new Pnin-up girl in town!

The November issue of Playboy de-robed cartoon character Marge Simpson, the first time the magazine has featured an animated model. In the next issue (December, set to hit newsstands in early November), the magazine will return to an old standard: Nabokov.

Don't worry, there will still be plenty of girls and not much clothing. But "Laura" is the one in this issue recieving all the media buzz; excerpts from Vladimir Nabokov's unfinished and previously unpublished novel, The Original of Laura, will appear in Playboy. According to various reviews, The Original of Laura centers around a corpulent scholar who is obsessively infatuated with his slender, promiscuous wife, who in turn resembles a young woman he was previously was in love with. As in much of Nabokov's writing, the themes of mortality, obsession, self-definition and self-erasure take prominence. This novel was still unfinished when Nabokov died on July 2, 1977. As Nabokov had given instructions that any unfinished work should be destroyed upon his death, his son Dmitri and wife Vera long deliberated as to the incomplete manuscript's fate. This spring, Dmitri announced that the text would be published, and soon Playboy revealed that they would have first serial rights. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Though perhaps initially surprising, the pairing makes sense. Besides the infamously sexual novel Lolita, many of Nabokov's novels--Pale Fire, Pnin, Ada, or Ardor--deal with themes of sexuality, whether focusing on desire, repression, confusion, or passion. In fact, Nabokov granted Playboy an extensive interview in 1964, and in 1969, Playboy excerpted Nabokov's novel Ada, or Ardor. Playboy even named the writer no. 22 on their list of the most important people in sex from the past 55 years.

So good news, guys! At least for the next month, you have a respectable excuse...even if you're really just checking out the cover girl, Joanna Krupa...

Happy (late) Birthday, Ezra Pound

October 30th was the poet Ezra Pound's birthday (with the modernist sensibility to time and memory, I'm sure he wouldn't mind this coming a few days late...) A controversial figure throughout his lifetime, especially due to his support of Benito Mussolini and his anti-Semitism, Pound was nevertheless one of the most influential literary figures of the 20th century. A central figure in the Modernist movement, Pound was actively involved in the careers of other writers, such as Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, and most famously T.S. Eliot. Much of his own poetry promoted Imagism--an aesthetic of clarity and precise language. The three poems below--some of his most famous--demonstrate the imaginative sharpness of his writing. Somehow I doubt Ezra was into birthday cakes. (AP Photo/Larry Crowe)

In A Station Of The Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Meditatio

When I carefully consider the curious habits of dogs
I am compelled to conclude
That man is the superior animal.

When I consider the curious habits of man
I confess, my friend, I am puzzled.

Salutation

O generation of the thoroughly smug
and thoroughly uncomfortable,
I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families,
I have seen their smiles full of teeth
and heard ungainly laughter.
And I am happier than you are,
And they were happier than I am;
And the fish swim in the lake
and do not even own clothing.

Good Manners and a Risky Heart: The Literary Appeal of Savannah

Savannah, Georgia. This Southern city has become synonymous with a kind of languid elegance, a slow-seeping decadence, that alluring mix of hospitality and tradition with just a hint of seedy underbelly peeking out from behind the Spanish moss. It’s no surprise that Savannah has long captured the literary imagination, and the writers that have fallen under its spell have surely done their duty to perpetuate to city’s mystique.

The most famous literary tribute to Savannah, now know by locals simply as “The Book,” undoubtedly is John Berendt’s 1994 nonfiction novel, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Later adapted into a film directed by Clint Eastwood, Berendt’s book traces his experiences in the city in the wake of a local murder. Berendt encounters a variety of eccentric characters, from the wealthy antique dealer Jim Williams, accused of murder, to local drag queen and entertainer the Lady Chablis. Berendt weaves these portraits of the disparate and vibrant residents of Savannah into not only an engrossing narrative, but also sense of the city itself.

In a much earlier literary appearance, Savannah serves as the death-site of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Captain J. Flint, “the bloodthirstiest buccaneer that ever lived.” In Treasure Island, Stevenson described the ruthless pirate on his deathbed in a tavern based on The Pirate House of Savannah. After shouting, “Fetch aft the rum Darby!” Captain Flint supposedly passes on the map to his buried treasure. The Pirate House was allegedly an actual inn that was frequented by pirates in the late 1700s.

A famous literary son of Savannah, the poet and author Conrad Aiken paid homage in his writing to the city that brought him comfort and pain. Aiken discovered the bodies of his parents after his father killed his mother and then committed suicide; Aiken would later move back to Savannah, into the house next door to the site of the tragedy. His highly autobiographical short story, “Strange Moonlight,” follows a young boy around the city, from Bonaventura Cemetery to Tybee beach. Conrad Aiken is buried in Bonaventura Cemetery, under a stone bench which reads, “Cosmos Mariner, Destination Unknown.”

Other well known books on Savannah and it’s literature include Chris Fuhrman’s memoir The Dangerous Lives of Alter Boys, as well as Only in Savannah, a collection of stories by writer Tom Coffey. Literary Savannah, by Patrick Allen, is an excellent anthology of fiction and nonfiction stories about Savannah.

In an article entitled, “Sip It Slow,” British journalist Nik Cohn describes his retreat to Savannah, inspired in part by John Berendt’s writing. Cohn pinpoints the peculiar attraction of the city: “Savannah has elaborate good manners, but a risky heart—a combination I’ve always found alluring.” Along with its flowered squares and hidden courtyards, stately mansions and mysterious superstitions, the slow indulgence of Savannah will always prey on the intellectual imagination. Cohn described Savannah’s magical effect well when he said, “Before I came to Savannah, I’d almost forgotten how good surrender can feel.”

"Secret" Travel Writers: Chuck Klosterman

Chuck Klosterman is an American humorist, best known for writing on rock music and pop culture. But did you know that he is also a travel writer? In his book, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story, Klosterman traces across the United States, visiting the sites where famous rock and roll artists died. Much of the book focuses on his relationship with three women in his life, and his writing is often in the same high-speed, ranting, colorful style as his earlier works such as Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs: A Low-Culture Manifesto. But at its heart, Killing Yourself to Live is a road story, following the classic American structure of a man with existential questions searching for answers on the open highway. And while Klosterman includes many fictional elements, the theme of music’s “death sites” lends itself well to travel writing. The impact of music, like the sense of a physical place, can be hard to translate into words. Klosterman’s writing isn’t explicitly interested in travel, but he clearly understands the link between place and sound, how a few details can stick in the mind and conjure up an entire experience. Klosterman uses the limitations of one to convey the other: listing off band names to convey the cooler-than-thou attitude of Manhattan, or capturing the hopeless boredom of a late night drive by describing the changing songs on the radio.

"Secret" Travel Writers: Michael Crichton

When people talk about travel writers, many names come to mind, from Bill Bryson to Marco Polo. One name that does not often pop up is Michael Crichton, most famous for his science and medical fiction thrillers. Crichton’s fiction, though often grounded in technology or medical breakthroughs, involves reality-bending adventures such as dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, time travel in Timeline, and aliens in Sphere. But Crichton also wrote a non-fiction adventure story: his 1988 book Travels, which details his travel to Los Angeles after leaving Harvard Medical School.

The book recounts his early writing career and his subsequent travels across the globe. From the heights of Kilimanjaro and the Mayan pyramids, to the depths of the shark-filled waters of Tahiti, Crichton uses his copious talent for gripping narratives to recount the personal adventures of a man seeking new experiences. Crichton’s writing chronicles his inner travels as well, focusing on forays into mysticism, exorcism, channeling, and psychic events.

Though travel writing may seem like a unique and specialized genre, many authors well known in other genres have published their own travel accounts. At it’s core, travel writing is the art of communicating one’s experience of the world. Michael Crichton is just one of these “hidden travel writers,” who used his flair for the thrilling, dramatic, and other-worldly to translate his physical and mental journeys into engaging prose.

(Michael Crichton, Travels. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.)

Witches and vampires and ghouls, oh my!

With Halloween lurking just around the corner, costume stores are filling up—along with the sexy nurses/firefighters/bumblebees, there area all the spooky standards: pointed hats, broomsticks, fake blood, ghastly white makeup, creepy fake fangs. But somehow the old Dracula costume seems a little odd these days. As everyone knows now, vampires are sexy, right? Twilight, True Blood, the Vampire Diaries, and Buffy can’t all be wrong…

Bram Stoker’s classic gothic novel Dracula is riddled with sexual innuendo (and in fact is often read as an extended allegory about the dangers of sexual repression). But the character of Dracula himself is far from alluring: the character Jonathon Harker describes him as having a “high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils, with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples, but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion.” But perhaps the most disturbing element—and here Stoker reveals his genius at evoking horror through the smallest of details—is the description of Dracula’s hands: “they were rather coarse—broad, with squat fingers. Strange to say, there were hairs in the centre of the palm. The nails were long and fine, and cut to a sharp point.” Hair in the middle of your palm, and sharpened, pointy fingernails? Yikes. That is definitely not sexy.

So how did we get from Dracula—I forgot to mention that the tops of his ears are “extremely pointed,” and his mouth “rather cruel looking”—to the Adonis-like Edward Cullen in Stephanie Meyers’ Twilight? “Edward in the sunlight was shocking. I couldn't get used to it, though I'd been staring at him all afternoon. His skin, white despite the faint flush from yesterday's hunting trip, literally sparkled, like thousands of tiny diamonds were embedded in the surface. He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest. His scintillating arms bare. His glistening, pale lavender lids ere shut, though of course he didn't sleep. A perfect statue, carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal.” Apparently, vampires have evolved quite a bit since 1897.

Although Dracula is no doubt the most iconic piece of vampire literature ever written, the physical monstrosity of its vampire is perhaps more of an aberration than the rule. Vampires, especially in literature, have often evoked both the horrific and the sensual. In fact, the first vampire to appear in English prose would not seem entirely out of place in the cast of one of today’s sexy-vamp-soaps. Written in 1819, John Polidori’s story, “The Vampyre,” follows a young man named Aubrey and his encounters with the suave Lord Ruthven. Aubrey gradually becomes aware of Lord Ruthven’s cruel and evil temperament (yes, he’s a vampire), and without giving away details, eventually everything ends horribly. What’s interesting is that Lord Ruthven is handsome, “in spite of the deadly hue of his face,” and delights in seducing women and destroying their reputation. As early as 1819, sex was not only associated with vampires, but seen as one of their weapons.

In 1872, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu published the novella, Carmilla, which many argue is about a lesbian vampire! A young woman is repeatedly visited by the female vampire Carmilla, who eventually is revealed to be an ancient vampire Countess. Coleridge’s poem “Christabel” has a similar theme of a female vampire preying on a young woman.

In the United States, fascination with vampires reached new heights with the publication of The Vampire Chronicles, by Anne Rice. As perhaps should be evident by the choice of casting in the film adaptation of Interview With A Vampire, Rice’s blood-suckers are excessively attractive and also emotionally sensitive. (If you haven’t seen the movie, star roles are played by Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Antonio Banderas, and Kirsten Dunst.)

Vampire literature has often been used to address all kinds of sexual themes: taboo relationships, transgressive acts, the relationship between sex and disease. So perhaps it should be no surprise that the newest spate of vampire entertainments seem to focus largely on the sexual allure of the undead. Plus, it sure helps TV ratings.

(Image: "Le Vampire," by Philip Burne-Jones (1861-1926) (Public domain))

Beantown Books: Great books set in Boston

As any resident will tell you, Boston prides itself on being a literary city. And with such a rich intellectual history, it’s no wonder; walking around the city, it seems that almost every other block boasts some site of historic literary importance—Longfellow’s house, the Make Way For Ducklings statues, the Old Corner Bookstore.

But Boston hasn’t only produced great literature; it also serves as a vibrant setting for many works of contemporary and historic fiction. As such a quirky city, steeped in history and local neighborhood pride, Boston provides writers with college campuses, dark twisting alleys, famous sports venues, and seemingly endless historic events into which they can unleash their protagonists.

Here are five very different books that highlight the city of Boston, for better or for worse:

1. How I Became A Famous Novelist, Steve Hely (2009). This hilarious book follows Pete Tarslaw—bitter, selfish, unhygienic, but improbably likeable—as he quests to humiliate his ex-girlfriend by writing a best-selling novel. Along the way, Tarslaw laments his decrepit Somerville apartment, traipses about on the Red Line, and frequently gets drunk at The Colonial Boy, "a pub with a half-assed Revolutionary theme on Mass. Ave."

2. The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri (2003). By the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Interpreter of Maladies, this novel follows a Bengali couple who leave Calcutta, India to settle in Central Square (the husband studies at MIT), and traces the cultural struggles of their son Gogol.

3. The Late George Apley, John P. Marquand (1937). This winner of a 1938 Pulitzer Prize is a portrait of Boston's WASP elite. Marquand takes us through Beacon Hill town houses, elite Harvard clubs, following a Boston Brahmin through the Great Depression as well as the Gilded Age. It is at times a searing satire, and at others a sensitive portrayal of a lifestyle that has since become extinct, but still remains a vital part of Boston's history and identity.

4. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner (1929). In one section of this classic, which traces the tragic decline of a southern family, Harvard freshman Quentin Compson wanders the streets of Cambridge, remembering his tumultuous relationship with his sister Caddy and reflecting on death and the world around him. A plaque on the Anderson Memorial Bridge over the Charles River pays tribute to this literary icon: "Quentin Compson. Drowned in the odour of honeysuckle. 1891-1910."

5. Run, Ann Patchett (2007). By the best-selling author of Bel Canto, this novel centers around the Boston Irish politician Bernard Doyle, his late wife Bernadette, son Sullivan, and his two adopted black sons, Tip and Teddy. The majority of the complex plot unfolds in 24 hours, traveling to Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, Mount Auburn Hospital, and the South End.

Transcendental Vagabonds: Poe vs. Boston

One hundred and sixty years ago this month, Edgar Allan Poe met a penniless end after being found on the streets of Baltimore. The city of Baltimore has been host to many celebrations of the poet’s life and works, and the focus on this city is fitting, as Poe felt much adoration for Baltimore, having lived there for several years. But 2009 also marks the 200th anniversary of the poet’s birth, and this year the city of Boston put aside pride to commemorate a decidedly prodigal son.

Edgar Allan Poe was born on Carver Street in Boston, Massachusetts, to actors Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins and David Poe. Though he moved to Virginia when he was only three years old, after his parents died, Poe returned to Boston after dropping out of the University of Virginia. Only 18, Poe faked his age and name to enlist in the Army, and was subsequently stationed briefly at Castle Island in the Boston harbor. Poe later moved back to the south, but he returned to Boston a year before he died.

Unlike Longfellow, Lowell, and the other Boston literati of his time, Poe scorned the city, insulting Boston with barbs that sting as only the gleefully clever can. In fact, a very public debate played out in contemporary newspapers following his appearance at the Boston Lyceum in 1845. After audience members took offense to Poe’s demeanor, a Boston editor published a critical review insulting his work. In response, Poe wrote:
We like Boston. We were born there–and perhaps it is just as well not to mention that we are heartily ashamed of the fact. The Bostonians are very well in their way. Their hotels are bad. Their pumpkin pies are delicious. Their poetry is not so good. Their common is no common thing–and the duck-pond might answer–if its answer could be heard for the frogs. But with all these good qualities the Bostonians have no soul. ...The Bostonians are well-bred–as very dull persons very generally are. (Poe, The Broadway Journal, Nov 1, 1845.)

Surprisingly, Poe’s first published work, an 1827 collection of poems entitled “Tamerlane,” was signed simply, “By a Bostonian.” Eighteen years later, Poe would vilify Bostonians, who he often referred to as Frogpondians: “The fact is, we despise them and defy them (the transcendental vagabonds!) and they may all go to the devil together.” (Poe, The Broadway Journal, Nov 22, 1845.)

And now, all these years later, the transcendental vagabonds have finally honored the great poet: although his birthplace is now occupied by a State Transportation Building, the corner of Boylston and Charles streets shall evermore be known as Poe Square.