Dervla Murphy Travel Writer.
Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2018 4:18 pm
At the other end of the travel writing spectrum is that old war horse travel writer Dervla Murphy. She’s unfashionable amongst the barely literate great unwashed because she focuses on the truth and can actually write plain and elegant English – not just romantic, flowery PR gush.
Writer of dozens of books many in the troubled third world. She has a 'certain view' about travel and how it should be about sharing experiences - or just having an opinion. In one book she describes a 25-year-old American she sees as typical of those she met along the route: “For them, travel is more a going away from rather than going toward, and they seem empty and unhappy and bewildered and pathetically anxious for companionship, yet are afraid to commit themselves to any ideal or cause or other individual.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/artsa ... years.html
Many on this forum would have noticed similar.
The poor old thing usually cycles – often in rough, dangerous places but greens and others ignore this because of her clear and frank descriptions – which destroy their need for romance. In the early 60’s she cycled from Europe to India long before the hippies fouled this route.
She links culture, people (particularly ordinary people), geography, history, economics and politics and was in the Romanian countryside when the murderous regime fell and her description of local response to seeing the dreadful leaders vivisected on live TV screened in town halls is memorable and awful. Her very early description of how AIDS was spread in Southern Africa by long distance truck drivers was years ahead of the WHO’s ‘revelations’.
A particular feature is her eye for the distinctive and vivid differences between people – some good and some not so good – but always a lot less than we have in common. Her books contain no hotel recommendations – except recommendations on places to stay away from and a deal of humor. Occasionally she carries a gun.
In simple terms she gives a clear, vivid description of places rather than focusing on how the world is reassuringly the same. She occupies a gap with the tons of promotional garbage (including Bill Bryson) on one side and erudite V S Naipaul and similar on the other. The deranged and fantastical Chatwin goes in the liars and narcissists bin. O’Hanlon, Jan Morris and Hoagland are probably in her territory. I’ve never been a fan of Theroux so I should probably be silent on him.
Some London opinions about her:
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/der ... 95587.html
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/ ... anreview11
Her view is that modern travel writing is often fictionalized and, to make it ‘interesting’, authors are often told to make things up. I think she’s probably right.
She has sympathy for the underdog and has been attacked as anti Israeli http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter ... 46386.html
One change she regrets is the adoption by so many of personal stereos, mobile phones and the headphones that go with them, with which they lock out everyone around them – including the travel writer dependent on chance encounters. In the old days, she says, travellers in a hostel would gather in the evening and exchange experiences and opinions. When she was in Jaffa, they barely acknowledged one another. “I watched in amazement as they queued up silently to take their turn at the computers, to communicate with the boyfriend or the parents or whoever back home. And I said to myself, 'Why the hell don’t they stay at home?’ ” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/books ... -computer/
She probably now likes that old song ‘why do the wrong people travel when the right people stay back home’, Chesterton on how travel narrows the mind or this Spectator rant about how horrible all human beings are – when on holiday. https://www.spectator.co.uk/2010/05/tra ... -the-mind/
Here is that old trooper and superb performer Stritch singing Coward.
Andy Simons in his review of Dervla Murphy's book "Between River and Sea : Encounters in Israel and Palestine" says: “At over 400 pages, this volume is almost bursting with things you probably don't know: Rape is not yet a crime; an "International" can marry a Palestinian, but don't be surprised if the native spouse gets arrested on no charge and then held indefinitely; an Israeli judge can change his own verdict; and five legal systems coexist in the OPT, even Ottoman.”
https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/socie ... fc548ccd67
At 80 in 2011 and faced with psychopathic Egyptian bureaucracy she got into Gaza via a 1 mile tunnel. https://www.spectator.co.uk/2013/02/gaza-stripped-bare/. She never travelled in Egypt and didn’t like it. Most of the 3 ½ star plus travel writers are of the same opinion – possibly all.
She is an acquired taste. Many people don’t like her. Whether you like her or not is an almost fail-safe litmus test of important other things.
At the end of her life she should cycle Brexit, Le Pen and Trump territory – and take a gun.
The Times and other posh London newspapers don’t think bog Irish worth interviewing but the United Arab Emirates does.
http://www.thenational.ae/arts-lifestyl ... vel-writer
Writer of dozens of books many in the troubled third world. She has a 'certain view' about travel and how it should be about sharing experiences - or just having an opinion. In one book she describes a 25-year-old American she sees as typical of those she met along the route: “For them, travel is more a going away from rather than going toward, and they seem empty and unhappy and bewildered and pathetically anxious for companionship, yet are afraid to commit themselves to any ideal or cause or other individual.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/artsa ... years.html
Many on this forum would have noticed similar.
The poor old thing usually cycles – often in rough, dangerous places but greens and others ignore this because of her clear and frank descriptions – which destroy their need for romance. In the early 60’s she cycled from Europe to India long before the hippies fouled this route.
She links culture, people (particularly ordinary people), geography, history, economics and politics and was in the Romanian countryside when the murderous regime fell and her description of local response to seeing the dreadful leaders vivisected on live TV screened in town halls is memorable and awful. Her very early description of how AIDS was spread in Southern Africa by long distance truck drivers was years ahead of the WHO’s ‘revelations’.
A particular feature is her eye for the distinctive and vivid differences between people – some good and some not so good – but always a lot less than we have in common. Her books contain no hotel recommendations – except recommendations on places to stay away from and a deal of humor. Occasionally she carries a gun.
In simple terms she gives a clear, vivid description of places rather than focusing on how the world is reassuringly the same. She occupies a gap with the tons of promotional garbage (including Bill Bryson) on one side and erudite V S Naipaul and similar on the other. The deranged and fantastical Chatwin goes in the liars and narcissists bin. O’Hanlon, Jan Morris and Hoagland are probably in her territory. I’ve never been a fan of Theroux so I should probably be silent on him.
Some London opinions about her:
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/der ... 95587.html
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/ ... anreview11
Her view is that modern travel writing is often fictionalized and, to make it ‘interesting’, authors are often told to make things up. I think she’s probably right.
She has sympathy for the underdog and has been attacked as anti Israeli http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter ... 46386.html
One change she regrets is the adoption by so many of personal stereos, mobile phones and the headphones that go with them, with which they lock out everyone around them – including the travel writer dependent on chance encounters. In the old days, she says, travellers in a hostel would gather in the evening and exchange experiences and opinions. When she was in Jaffa, they barely acknowledged one another. “I watched in amazement as they queued up silently to take their turn at the computers, to communicate with the boyfriend or the parents or whoever back home. And I said to myself, 'Why the hell don’t they stay at home?’ ” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/books ... -computer/
She probably now likes that old song ‘why do the wrong people travel when the right people stay back home’, Chesterton on how travel narrows the mind or this Spectator rant about how horrible all human beings are – when on holiday. https://www.spectator.co.uk/2010/05/tra ... -the-mind/
Here is that old trooper and superb performer Stritch singing Coward.
Andy Simons in his review of Dervla Murphy's book "Between River and Sea : Encounters in Israel and Palestine" says: “At over 400 pages, this volume is almost bursting with things you probably don't know: Rape is not yet a crime; an "International" can marry a Palestinian, but don't be surprised if the native spouse gets arrested on no charge and then held indefinitely; an Israeli judge can change his own verdict; and five legal systems coexist in the OPT, even Ottoman.”
https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/socie ... fc548ccd67
At 80 in 2011 and faced with psychopathic Egyptian bureaucracy she got into Gaza via a 1 mile tunnel. https://www.spectator.co.uk/2013/02/gaza-stripped-bare/. She never travelled in Egypt and didn’t like it. Most of the 3 ½ star plus travel writers are of the same opinion – possibly all.
She is an acquired taste. Many people don’t like her. Whether you like her or not is an almost fail-safe litmus test of important other things.
At the end of her life she should cycle Brexit, Le Pen and Trump territory – and take a gun.
The Times and other posh London newspapers don’t think bog Irish worth interviewing but the United Arab Emirates does.
http://www.thenational.ae/arts-lifestyl ... vel-writer