/lit/ - Literature

interesting, smart people have too much social anxiety to travel very much

If you are a travel writer then I would say it is mildly important.

>>6938866
lol

>>6938876

spotted an uninteresting person

>>6938866
>some people actually think that

not at all

>>6938898

the well-adjusted don't have anything to say

>>6938908
naive and childish

I think its helpful but not necessary. It is never a bad thing to do.

>>6938908
Does your mom know you're using the computer ?

>>6938866
This is clearly not true as an absolute. I will say, however, that people who claim the opposite extreme -- i.e. one must travel xx amount in order to be smart or interesting -- are just as ridiculous.

>>6938914

>as opposed to adult and poignant

fuck off

>>6938923

Good one

shaking in my galoshes

>>6938927
zzz
you're so lost I'm not even motivated enough to insult you

just leave the board

It's as important as visiting tiny chat dot com slash omnichan.

aka very important.

>>6938866
>mfw I'm in Italy right now with classmates and every single one of them is smarter than this loser-of-life
Why do NEETs think being losers in every conceivable aspect of life makes them smart? It's actually the exact opposite.

To OP: beneficial but not by any means necessary. I would especially recommend travelling by yourself if you want anything like an authentic experience.

>>6939000

>authentic experience
>losers

you're not as smart as you think you are

>>6939009
I am willing to bet that post made sense in your head

>>6939016

I'm willing to bet you don't think very hard or very much about your emotional posts

It's not important at all. "Travelling" is basically a flagrant display of white privilege. Utterly meaningless peacocking.

If you have anything worth writing it's not going to come from physically relocating yourself in search of things to write about. Keyword: "worth."

QUESTIONS OF TRAVEL, by Elizabeth Bishop

There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams
hurry too rapidly down to the sea,
and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops
makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion,
turning to waterfalls under our very eyes.
--For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains,
aren't waterfalls yet,
in a quick age or so, as ages go here,
they probably will be.
But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling,
the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships,
slime-hung and barnacled.

Think of the long trip home.
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?
Where should we be today?
Is it right to be watching strangers in a play
in this strangest of theatres?
What childishness is it that while there's a breath of life
in our bodies, we are determined to rush
to see the sun the other way around?
The tiniest green hummingbird in the world?
To stare at some inexplicable old stonework,
inexplicable and impenetrable,
at any view,
instantly seen and always, always delightful?
Oh, must we dream our dreams
and have them, too?
And have we room
for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?

But surely it would have been a pity
not to have seen the trees along this road,
really exaggerated in their beauty,
not to have seen them gesturing
like noble pantomimists, robed in pink.
--Not to have had to stop for gas and heard
the sad, two-noted, wooden tune
of disparate wooden clogs
carelessly clacking over
a grease-stained filling-station floor.
(In another country the clogs would all be tested.
Each pair there would have identical pitch.)
--A pity not to have heard
the other, less primitive music of the fat brown bird
who sings above the broken gasoline pump
in a bamboo church of Jesuit baroque:
three towers, five silver crosses.
--Yes, a pity not to have pondered,
blurr'dly and inconclusively,
on what connection can exist for centuries
between the crudest wooden footwear
and, careful and finicky,
the whittled fantasies of wooden footwear
and, careful and finicky,
the whittled fantasies of wooden cages.
--Never to have studied history in
the weak calligraphy of songbirds' cages.
--And never to have had to listen to rain
so much like politicians' speeches:
two hours of unrelenting oratory
and then a sudden golden silence
in which the traveller takes a notebook, writes:

"Is it lack of imagination that makes us come
to imagined places, not just stay at home?
Or could Pascal have been not entirely right
about just sitting quietly in one's room?

Continent, city, country, society:
the choice is never wide and never free.
And here, or there . . . No. Should we have stayed at home,
wherever that may be?"

>>6939065
>somebody insults him
>he repeats the insult
>thinks he is being witty

eh, depends on if how much a particular geographic location is important to what you want to write about. people who go on about how traveling is such an important experience strike me as people who want to draw extra meaning out of the fact that they had enough money to take an expensive vacation.

it probably helps but its not that big a deal.

>>6939125

I'm not aiming for wit, this isn't a competition, you're just a dumbass

>>6939165

Is it a competition of duls? Because you are great at it


Dubs

>>6938950
>shilling in my bread

reported

>>6939145
>people who want to draw extra meaning out of the fact that they had enough money to take an expensive vacation.
This

It depends.

Proust wrote without leaving his apartment

Kerouac could only find inspiration in his travels

How do you travel when you are poor as shit? Is it possible to be lower class and live the literary lifestyle?

>>6940348
No.

>>6940348
Teaching English. Working on cruise ships. Living frugal as fuck.

>says Google.

>>6938851
if you can find your muse that way then sure but who knows if thats what will do it for you.

>>6940293
a lot of Prousts inspiration came from going on walks as well though which is a light form of travel

>>6940446
Walking =\= traveling. But studies do suggest that movement increases brain function.

>>6940348
>Hostels
>Teach English (if you have a college degree)
>fly standby
>take buses or trains if you're traveling state to state
I had a couple friends who did Europe like that for several months for ~3,000 USD.

>>6940462
>Travel is the movement of people between relatively distant geographical locations, and can involve travel by foot, bicycle, automobile, train, boat, airplane, or other means, with or without luggage, and can be one way or round trip.

I know its not the traveling OP was implying but its still a form getting out somewhere that can inspire writers.

>>6940480

>teaching english in Europe

you can do the same thing and make enough to save 10k in a year by teaching in asia. just saying m8

>>6938851
I don't trust untraveled authors

>>6939016
I love you asuka

>>6940462
well you should have walked the Guermantes Way ;D
also
>>6938851
KIER
KE
GAARD

I travelled from New York to Los Angeles this summer on google maps street view, took me fourteen days

>>6942106
truly next level

>>6941903
this, tbh

>>6939121
TL;DR

>>6939121
Based anon gives GOAT bishop verse to an undeserving thread
Well done anon

>>6939121
>by Elizabeth Bishop

stopped reading there

if you have not visited and experienced the place that you write about you will be a failure of a writer.

So if you want to only write locally then no you don't have to travel.

>>6942772
>Kafka wrote about America
>He never visited America
>Amerika is brilliant

>being a casual

>>6942761
come back with an opinion once you've learned the personally-legitimizing 3000 lines of poetry and 2 languages
having done that, feel free to shut the fuck up

>>6942792
>this damage control

>>6938851
It can be important if you are writing commercial fiction since it is primarily wish fulfillment and escapism. exotic locales, fancy trappings, fashion, etc.

almost a convention in the thriller genre to bounce all over the globe.

If you are writing the real thing it matters very little

>>6938927
>>6938931
>>6938908
>>6938895
>>6938866

Not sure whether this is a teenager or really good bait

>>6939000
>it's actually the exact opposite
>not by any means necessary
>an authentic experience
>in every conceivable aspect

PREFACE.
IN THE DESOBLIGEANT.

It must have been observed by many a peripatetic philosopher, That nature has set up by her own unquestionable authority certain boundaries and fences to circumscribe the discontent of man; she has effected her purpose in the quietest and easiest manner by laying him under almost insuperable obligations to work out his ease, and to sustain his sufferings at home. It is there only that she has provided him with the most suitable objects to partake of his happiness, and bear a part of that burden which in all countries and ages has ever been too heavy for one pair of shoulders. ’Tis true, we are endued with an imperfect power of spreading our happiness sometimes beyond her limits, but ’tis so ordered, that, from the want of languages, connections, and dependencies, and from the difference in education, customs, and habits, we lie under so many impediments in communicating our sensations out of our own sphere, as often amount to a total impossibility.

It will always follow from hence, that the balance of sentimental commerce is always against the expatriated adventurer: he must buy what he has little occasion for, at their own price;—his conversation will seldom be taken in exchange for theirs without a large discount,—and this, by the by, eternally driving him into the hands of more equitable brokers, for such conversation as he can find, it requires no great spirit of divination to guess at his party—

This brings me to my point; and naturally leads me (if the see-saw of this désobligeant will but let me get on) into the efficient as well as final causes of travelling—

Your idle people that leave their native country, and go abroad for some reason or reasons which may be derived from one of these general causes:—

Infirmity of body,
Imbecility of mind, or
Inevitable necessity.

The first two include all those who travel by land or by water, labouring with pride, curiosity, vanity, or spleen, subdivided and combined ad infinitum.

The third class includes the whole army of peregrine martyrs; more especially those travellers who set out upon their travels with the benefit of the clergy, either as delinquents travelling under the direction of governors recommended by the magistrate;—or young gentlemen transported by the cruelty of parents and guardians, and travelling under the direction of governors recommended by Oxford, Aberdeen, and Glasgow.

>>6943088
There is a fourth class, but their number is so small that they would not deserve a distinction, were it not necessary in a work of this nature to observe the greatest precision and nicety, to avoid a confusion of character. And these men I speak of, are such as cross the seas and sojourn in a land of strangers, with a view of saving money for various reasons and upon various pretences: but as they might also save themselves and others a great deal of unnecessary trouble by saving their money at home,—and as their reasons for travelling are the least complex of any other species of emigrants, I shall distinguish these gentlemen by the name of

Simple Travellers.

Thus the whole circle of travellers may be reduced to the following heads:—

Idle Travellers,

Inquisitive Travellers,

Lying Travellers,

Proud Travellers,

Vain Travellers,

Splenetic Travellers.

Then follow:

The Travellers of Necessity,

The Delinquent and Felonious Traveller,

The Unfortunate and Innocent Traveller,

The Simple Traveller,

And last of all (if you please) The Sentimental Traveller, (meaning thereby myself) who have travell’d, and of which I am now sitting down to give an account,—as much out of Necessity, and the besoin de Voyager, as any one in the class.

I am well aware, at the same time, as both my travels and observations will be altogether of a different cast from any of my forerunners, that I might have insisted upon a whole nitch entirely to myself;—but I should break in upon the confines of the Vain Traveller, in wishing to draw attention towards me, till I have some better grounds for it than the mere Novelty of my Vehicle.

It is sufficient for my reader, if he has been a traveller himself, that with study and reflection hereupon he may be able to determine his own place and rank in the catalogue;—it will be one step towards knowing himself; as it is great odds but he retains some tincture and resemblance, of what he imbibed or carried out, to the present hour.

The man who first transplanted the grape of Burgundy to the Cape of Good Hope (observe he was a Dutchman) never dreamt of drinking the same wine at the Cape, that the same grape produced upon the French mountains,—he was too phlegmatic for that—but undoubtedly he expected to drink some sort of vinous liquor; but whether good or bad, or indifferent,—he knew enough of this world to know, that it did not depend upon his choice, but that what is generally called choice, was to decide his success: however, he hoped for the best; and in these hopes, by an intemperate confidence in the fortitude of his head, and the depth of his discretion, Mynheer might possibly oversee both in his new vineyard; and by discovering his nakedness, become a laughing stock to his people.

Even so it fares with the Poor Traveller, sailing and posting through the politer kingdoms of the globe, in pursuit of knowledge and improvements.

>>6943093
Knowledge and improvements are to be got by sailing and posting for that purpose; but whether useful knowledge and real improvements is all a lottery;—and even where the adventurer is successful, the acquired stock must be used with caution and sobriety, to turn to any profit:—but, as the chances run prodigiously the other way, both as to the acquisition and application, I am of opinion, That a man would act as wisely, if he could prevail upon himself to live contented without foreign knowledge or foreign improvements, especially if he lives in a country that has no absolute want of either;—and indeed, much grief of heart has it oft and many a time cost me, when I have observed how many a foul step the Inquisitive Traveller has measured to see sights and look into discoveries; all which, as Sancho Panza said to Don Quixote, they might have seen dry-shod at home. It is an age so full of light, that there is scarce a country or corner in Europe whose beams are not crossed and interchanged with others.—Knowledge in most of its branches, and in most affairs, is like music in an Italian street, whereof those may partake who pay nothing.—But there is no nation under heaven—and God is my record (before whose tribunal I must one day come and give an account of this work)—that I do not speak it vauntingly,—but there is no nation under heaven abounding with more variety of learning,—where the sciences may be more fitly woo’d, or more surely won, than here,—where art is encouraged, and will so soon rise high,—where Nature (take her altogether) has so little to answer for,—and, to close all, where there is more wit and variety of character to feed the mind with:—Where then, my dear countrymen, are you going?—

We are only looking at this chaise, said they.—Your most obedient servant, said I, skipping out of it, and pulling off my hat.—We were wondering, said one of them, who, I found was an Inquisitive Traveller,—what could occasion its motion.—’Twas the agitation, said I, coolly, of writing a preface.—I never heard, said the other, who was a Simple Traveller, of a preface wrote in a désobligeant.—It would have been better, said I, in a vis-a-vis.

—As an Englishman does not travel to see Englishmen, I retired to my room.

I'd spend my whole life travelling if I could afford to. If there were no pressing urgency of work, I would spend my life learning to speak other languages and going to other countries and just lingering and watching all the strange but human ways that people live.

But, as no such possibility lies open to me, or so it seems, instead I read old books, written by men of strange and archaic tempers, expounding all kinds of awkward ideologies, telling all manner of fun stories. There is as much strange and different in Pope as in France; as much alien in Virgil as in Japan. And what's more, there are surprises in your own neighborhood, if you're looking for them. Life doesn't bore people, people bore themselves. If that be untrue, yet I think I shall have lost nothing by believing it. And I keep well enough entertained.

Still, I would love to travel.

>>6938866
You're fucking cancer to society.

Has McCarthy ever left America? Doesn't seem like it.

>>6943732

He got a grant after his early writing and traveled around Europe. I think he lived in Spain or Ibiza for a few months.

>>6940462
but it does = leaving the house, something a lot of you guys forget to do

>>6938851
i travel every time I crack open a new book tbh :)

>>6943979
>Cormac McCarthy
>Ibiza
I'm gonna assume Ibiza hasn't always been one giant nightclub. That or McCarthy just took his grant money and went "fuck it".

>>6943979
>Ibiza

>>6945730
>being this tumblr-core