John Gimlette, Theatre of Fish
Nov. 7th, 2010 10:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustI bought this book secondhand in the Amnesty bookshop, not once but twice.
I'm ambivalent about travel writing. Some of it I enjoy very much; some of it I find profoundly irritating. I want, I think, to be given something by the book that I wouldn't get from visiting the place myself, whether because the author brings something - background, observation or sheer style - that I lack, or because I'm never going to visit, the place is too remote or too unwelcoming. This may explain why many of my favourite travel books are over fifty years old: they describe places which no longer exist. This avoids the risk that I will start to mutter "Gimme a publishing contract! I could do that..." (No, I probably couldn't, I'm just jealous, but it still does nothing for my enjoyment of the book).
So I hesitated over Theatre of Fish. On the one hand, great title. The book describes Gimlette's travels in Newfoundland and Labrador: northernness and islands, both of which are good things. And he has an intriguing background story, too: he travels to Labrador as a stranger, an outsider, yet the place is part of the mythology with which he has grown up. His great-grandfather had sailed to Newfoundland and Labrador in the 1890s with Sir Wilfred Grenfell, and this link was strengthened because - whether by coincidence or from some sort of family piety - he attended a school run by members of the Grenfell family, where 'Grenfell of Labrador' was an ever-present mythic figure. That's certainly a hook to hang a book on, enough (most of the time) to set aside the ungracious reflection that, coming from this sort of background, Gimlette can afford to take a month or so off from his day job to undertake the journey he describes. And beside, the book has puffins on the cover (not so many inside, but I didn't know that, then).
I wonder how someone who knows the region would react to this book? Gimlette describes terrain which is capable of astonishing beauty, but barely habitable, to the edges of which cling settlements whose livelihood has vanished. He weaves into the narrative of his travels the history of the different expeditions which aimed to settle and to profit from this rocky coast, most of which ended badly. The people he meets confide their life stories in him, and these are invariably dramatic, and usually tragic. It ought to be unbearably depressing to read, but it isn't, because it's so well written.
Gimlette writes with grim relish, an eye for the glint of a detail and an ear for a well-balanced phrase. This last manifests in a habit of closing each section with a bang, a one-liner (often a one sentence paragraph) which rounds off what precedes like an exclamation mark, and which after a while becomes such an identifiable mannerism that it loses its impact. But the book is full of passages that I wanted to read out loud to anyone who could be persuaded to listen. Here he is on Newfoundland's Great Northern Peninsula:
Or this, from the South Coast Steamer, which made me think of Fair Isle:
Failing to pin down anyone to read these to, I decided that D. was the perfect audience, wrapped it up and - with some regret - gave it to him for his birthday, thinking that I could always buy myself another copy. Indeed, I went as far as adding it to my Amazon wish-list - but then, next time I visited the Amnesty bookshop, there it was, paperback not hardback but with the same puffins on the cover, so I bought it all over again. Which has to be a recommendation.
John Gimlette's web site
I'm ambivalent about travel writing. Some of it I enjoy very much; some of it I find profoundly irritating. I want, I think, to be given something by the book that I wouldn't get from visiting the place myself, whether because the author brings something - background, observation or sheer style - that I lack, or because I'm never going to visit, the place is too remote or too unwelcoming. This may explain why many of my favourite travel books are over fifty years old: they describe places which no longer exist. This avoids the risk that I will start to mutter "Gimme a publishing contract! I could do that..." (No, I probably couldn't, I'm just jealous, but it still does nothing for my enjoyment of the book).
So I hesitated over Theatre of Fish. On the one hand, great title. The book describes Gimlette's travels in Newfoundland and Labrador: northernness and islands, both of which are good things. And he has an intriguing background story, too: he travels to Labrador as a stranger, an outsider, yet the place is part of the mythology with which he has grown up. His great-grandfather had sailed to Newfoundland and Labrador in the 1890s with Sir Wilfred Grenfell, and this link was strengthened because - whether by coincidence or from some sort of family piety - he attended a school run by members of the Grenfell family, where 'Grenfell of Labrador' was an ever-present mythic figure. That's certainly a hook to hang a book on, enough (most of the time) to set aside the ungracious reflection that, coming from this sort of background, Gimlette can afford to take a month or so off from his day job to undertake the journey he describes. And beside, the book has puffins on the cover (not so many inside, but I didn't know that, then).
I wonder how someone who knows the region would react to this book? Gimlette describes terrain which is capable of astonishing beauty, but barely habitable, to the edges of which cling settlements whose livelihood has vanished. He weaves into the narrative of his travels the history of the different expeditions which aimed to settle and to profit from this rocky coast, most of which ended badly. The people he meets confide their life stories in him, and these are invariably dramatic, and usually tragic. It ought to be unbearably depressing to read, but it isn't, because it's so well written.
Gimlette writes with grim relish, an eye for the glint of a detail and an ear for a well-balanced phrase. This last manifests in a habit of closing each section with a bang, a one-liner (often a one sentence paragraph) which rounds off what precedes like an exclamation mark, and which after a while becomes such an identifiable mannerism that it loses its impact. But the book is full of passages that I wanted to read out loud to anyone who could be persuaded to listen. Here he is on Newfoundland's Great Northern Peninsula:
Roads had only been scraped into the interior in the last five years. Instead of traffic they'd brought vegetables. Long queues of carrots and cabbages now marched along the verges into the barrens. I hired a car and followed a long slash of radishes for about twenty miles, until it ended in a gardener.
'By jammy, it's warm in here,' he said, as if he'd never been inland
before, until being carried here on a wave of mutant radishes.
Or this, from the South Coast Steamer, which made me think of Fair Isle:
Others had a more exotic purpose to their journey. There were wedding guests and midwives, caribou hunters, mourners, messengers, dozens of salesmen, and an airman who'd not been home since the war. Best of all was a man with a missing fInger, and gold rings on all the rest. He refused to tell anyone his name ('Need to know basis only'), and desperately wanted us to think he was running rum but, when he got off, I noticed that all he had with him was a tin roof and a poodle.
The lives of these people were always written in their freight. Apart from anything, it was all so conspicuous, whether it was guns or a month's incontinence pads. Usually, it told the story of a siege: salt beef by the hundredweight, ketchup in gallons and crates of hard tack. This often made it diffIcult for me to shop at the store (unless I wanted a torpedo of pork, or a fortnight of cheddar) but, for the outporters, it was the end of secrecy. Nothing ever happened - whether it was an affair or a new kitchen - without an extravagant preview, in raw materials.
Failing to pin down anyone to read these to, I decided that D. was the perfect audience, wrapped it up and - with some regret - gave it to him for his birthday, thinking that I could always buy myself another copy. Indeed, I went as far as adding it to my Amazon wish-list - but then, next time I visited the Amnesty bookshop, there it was, paperback not hardback but with the same puffins on the cover, so I bought it all over again. Which has to be a recommendation.
John Gimlette's web site
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no subject
Date: 2010-11-08 02:19 am (UTC)FWIW, I love that you can help us to see your travels through your eyes. It's a real gift. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2010-11-08 12:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-08 08:22 am (UTC)before, until being carried here on a wave of mutant radishes.
That is an excellent sentence.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-08 12:05 pm (UTC)