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December 31st, 2021 at 8:12pm

Wherever you go, there you are.

In other words: You bring you with you. For many situations, including travel, we should append a word to that sentence: You bring you with you—unfortunately.

In simplistic terms, that's the central premise of Alain de Botton's The Art of Travel, a lyrical and philosophical examination of travel, and the mindsets that ruin it.

Background on this series is here.

"Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically introduces viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are."

Intriguing Structure

The Art of Travel is divided into five parts:

• Departure
• Motives
• Landscape
• Art
• Return

Each part contains one or two chapters. Each chapter opens with a list of places and "guides" (artists, thinkers, etc) mentioned within, and the chapter's content is composed of eight to ten brief numbered sections, most no longer than a page or two. Photographs and artwork also punctuate the text.

Botton's book is readable and moves quickly.

"Motives," for example, consists of the chapters On the Exotic and On Curiosity. In the former chapter, Botton is in Amsterdam, thinking about Gustave Flaubert in Egypt. In the latter, he muddles through Madrid and ruminates on the impressive life of Alexander von Humboldt.

The book's loose organization and subdivisions keep the pace moving and provide natural stopping points because, while it's not Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit in style, difficulty, or length, The Art of Travel is intellectual, especially for a travel book. We need to put it down once in a while to contemplate the esoteric aspects of our journeys.

Translating the awareness Botton brings to travel—and to thinking about travel—into tangible psychological shifts may represent a reader's glass ceiling.

The Heart of the Art

Botton's first chapter of "Departure," On Anticipation, exquisitely juxtaposes a trip he took to Barbados with the protagonist of J.-K. Huysmans's 1884 novel A rebours (Against the Grain).

In A rebours, Jean des Esseintes, a libertine-turned-homebody, reads Dickens, falls in love with London, and decides to visit.

Alain de Botton's website is at alaindebotton.com.

The author in Amsterdam, reflecting on Flaubert.

Des Esseintes buys a Baedeker's Guide to London, then, near the Gare Saint-Lazare in Paris, he stops at an English tavern where he orders oxtail soup, smoked haddock, roast beef and potatoes, Stilton cheese, and a few pints of ale. He admires people speaking English who seem straight out of Little Dorrit and Martin Chuzzlewit. He is, quite simply, delighted.

But then des Esseintes starts thinking.

Cut to a new numbered section.

Botton puts des Esseintes aside for a moment, and is now in Barbados, on vacation with a partner. In less than a day, his nine-and-a-half-hour flight from England has already coalesced into a few images, of which only one survives years later: his in-flight meal. All he can remember about the airport is the passport line.

Without any intention, Botton has started summarizing his vacation as it occurs, much like an artist nips and tucks reality to make a work more focused and interesting.

Barbados is a beach location, typically not a place where extraneous details are remembered. The goal of a visit is for specifics to evaporate in the dazzling light and be washed away by the sea. The anticipation of sun and sand guides Botton in the trimming of his memories; if something doesn't fit his romanticized and exaggerated pre-trip ideal, it's doomed to be forgotten.

Whether those discarded details are important or not is beside the point. In a situation which is hardly unique to travel, Botton's mind thinks it knows better than actual experience.

Botton lounges in a chair on the edge of the water. For about ten minutes, he is happy. He is on the beach, where he wants to be. But then he starts thinking, too.

Here comes the ankylosaurus, just like your worrying mind.

From the outside, he looks like a vacationer enjoying the sea. But inside?

Botton finally realizes that the place where he stands has little influence on what actually passes through his mind. Reminding us of des Esseintes, who felt close to London using his imagination in a Parisian tavern, Botton concludes, "We may best be able to inhabit a place when we are not faced with the additional challenge of having to be there."

Wherever you go, there you are.

Sampling a Few More Themes

The Sublime

In "Landscape," the chapter On the Sublime sees Botton traveling in the Sinai. The desert can make us feel small and weak, and for Botton, an important, even healthy message lies therein. "Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically introduces viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are."

"We may best be able to inhabit a place when we are not faced with the additional challenge of having to be there."

Draftsmanship

On Possessing Beauty in "Art" devotes many sections to English teacher and artist John Ruskin, and his belief in the importance of drawing. Later, Botton spends an hour trying to draw an oak tree, and he claims the exercise has made him more appreciative of oak trees and better able to remember them.

To quote Ruskin, "[The sketcher's] eye is accustomed to search into the cause of beauty, and penetrate the minutest parts of loveliness."

Local Travel

In a post-COVID world, the "Return" chapter On Habit falls flat. People have traveled to their kitchens and patios on social media (mostly as a joke), and bloggers have indulged in "local travel" in order to scratch the wanderlustful itch.

But we return to the important idea Botton keeps highlighting in The Art of Travel, that we need to see differently: "The pleasure we derive from a journey may be dependent more on the mind-set we travel with than on the destination we travel to."

Success, or Successful Failure?

Botton writes, "[Our travels] express, however inarticulately, an understanding of what life might be about," but can we actually shake off the habits, weights, and annoyances of the self to see more clearly? To travel better? To live better?

Translating the awareness Botton brings to travel—and to thinking about travel—into tangible psychological shifts may represent a reader's glass ceiling. We may not be able to break through.

When traveling, we need to look more closely at ourselves and our environment: not an easy task.

I'm not certain I will travel differently, or better, after having read The Art of Travel: despite my efforts to reduce its power, my mind has a hold on me. The ingredients of awareness—introduction, inventory, and inquiry—make a mediocre therapist. Even when wrapped in smart prose, they can only go so far.

Still, the effort has value.

I will consciously recall my powerlessness when viewing a polychromatic sunrise from a mountaintop. I will question what's missing in my life if I experience envy at the sight of a beautiful house or apartment in a foreign city. And when I suffer what I call the Day Three Doldrums, where I just want to stay in my hotel and nap, I'll remind myself the condition is not unique to me.

The ingredients of awareness...make a mediocre therapist.

I will still feel small and inadequate when beholding the sublime. I will still suffer the occasional pang of jealousy. And I will definitely continue to endure the strange lethargy that traveling inspires after a few days, especially in the afternoon. But I will think about those emotions more closely, perhaps even examine them. Maybe I'll make some progress.

And I think that's enough for Botton to declare victory. The Art of Travel is a splendid book.

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