As an experienced traveler, there’s nothing I love more than a book about traveling. Not so much a travel book, as travel books suck. They are usually self-important and boring and, to be honest, you have to be pretty simplistic to think you could understand a culture you’ve barely spent any time in. But stories that take place within a wandering setting are fucking sweet. So here are the Disclaimer’s Top Five Road Books (That You Haven’t Read). This is what you want to read to get in the mood to travel. In no particular order.
1) Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer.
Please don’t see the movie and then think, “Oh, I don’t need to read the book.” Because Sean Penn’s movie, awesome as it is, is kind of the cultural equivalent of giving Chris McCandless a blowjob. No, this true story about the ill-fated traveler who abandoned his family, burned his Social Security card, and spent two years tramping across America is much more complex than Penn’s movie, and Krakauer’s brilliant story-telling makes it one of the easiest non-fiction reads you’ll ever put your hands on. And it displays McCandless as a flawed idealist, rather than Penn’s unfortunate visionary.
2) The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub.
King and Straub’s fantasy tale follows an 11-year-old boy who can slip in and out or a parallel universe and must travel across the country – our U.S. and the parallel U.S. – to reach the Talisman, a mysterious object that will save his mother’s life. An absolutely bizarre book, but probably King’s best work, and it gives the King fan a sneak peak at what’s to come in his Dark Tower series, which he would finish 20 years later. I’d include the Dark Tower too, as it’s a road story, but the Talisman is shorter and better told, and frankly, each Dark Tower book gets progressively worse.
3) The Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy
Ok, this is technically cheating, as it’s three books, but they’re all weaved together. The Crossing, the first, details the travels back and forth across the Mexican border of Billy Parham. All the Pretty Horses, details the travels and love affairs of John Grady Cole, and Cities of the Plain, the third, details the rest of the lives of both men. The first two are probably better than the third, but the reason they’re on this list is because each of them evokes fantastic imagery of the Southwest U.S. in the early 20th Century, at the end of the cowboy era. It’ll make you want to sleep in a tent under the stars with a cigar and a guitar. And, come on, it’s by Cormac McCarthy, the man’s a writing God.
4) Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien
A bizarre Vietnam War book by the guy who did The Things They Carried, about a Private who decides to go AWOL and walk to Paris. From Vietnam. The other members of his squad decide to follow him through Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. More about war than travel, but a story so weird and exotic that you kinda want to go to Paris via Asia afterwards.
5) Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga by Hunter S. Thompson
Yeah, I know this isn’t really his “travel” book. I know his classic is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but this is books you haven’t already read, and if you haven’t read Fear and Loathing, you really should be shot in the forehead. Hell’s Angels was before he got deep into drugs – and I say that only relative to Thompson himself, not to what anyone else would consider deep – and it’s basically a non-fiction book on the Hell’s Angels in their heyday, before Altamont and the wars between motorcycle gangs. Thompson rode with them as only the King of Gonzo could, and eventually he got his ass kicked by them. The book is good, but I’ve never seen a piece of writing that made me want to get out and drive, windows down, like the last chapter.
This is very obviously an incomplete list. They’re books you SHOULD read, not the best of all time. I intentionally avoided anything I thought could have made a summer reading list at some point (okay, maybe Into the Wild, but Christ, DON’T just watch the movie). If you haven’t, though, check out the following:
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson
The Dark Tower series by Stephen King
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
The Stand by Stephen King
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto “Che” Guevara
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
No comments:
Post a Comment