Hüzün

Istanbul is travel writing at its most pure. The author doesn't travel far, at most a few kilometres from the streets he grew up in and has lived in all his life. Backwards and forwards in time a bit too, but the real travel is done by the reader, transported to a beguiling and intriguing city that is as alien and strange as anything I can imagine.

Orhan Pamuk on why he writes:

I write because I can't do normal work like other people. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at all of you, angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can only partake in real life by changing it. I write because I want others, all of us, the whole world to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more then I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write to understand why I am so very, very angry at all of you, so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page, I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of literature. I write because it is exciting to turn all of life's beauties and riches into words. I write not tell a story, but to compose a story. I write because I want to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go - just as in a dream - I can't quite get there. I write because I never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.

From Other Colours, 2007

And what does Hüzün mean? Well, you will just have to read Istanbul and find out.

The Age of Kali

It seems strange reading The Age of Kali now. Written as contemporary reportage in the mid- to late-1990s many of the events and personalities he covers have moved to centre stage while others have faded into obscurity.

Dalrymple is a brilliant writer and he has clearly immersed himself in India and all its chaotic glory. He seeks out fascinating stories; and by talking to people from all levels of this intensely stratified society he creates vivid pictures of events, issues and personalities that have shaped its recent history.

The best chapters illuminate and anticipate the momentous changes still underway in Indian society, which most other commentators are only now beginning to notice and come to terms with. However, the book doesn't feel cohesive or complete. I found myself wanting to know more of the history and background; and yearned for him to fill in the gaps between these individual stories.

The problem is that all the material had already been published in various newspapers and magazines and while many of the pieces have been reworked or expanded for the book, they still display off-putting variations in tone and style which make it far more disjointed than I felt it should be. The pieces for Tatler and Condé Naste Traveller sit uneasily alongside the more in-depth and interesting work for Granta and The Observer.

American Journeys

On the United States of America my senses swing like a door with no latch. They are moved by fierce gusts and imperceptible zephyrs. Love and loathing come and go in about the same proportion.

... thinking that it was in the 'nature' of America to be brutal, racist and imperialistic, a paradox appears. The Freedom Marchers had been Americans. Martin Luther King was American. Sidney Perelman was American. Mark Twain was American. Portnoy was American. Louis Armstrong, Bob Dylan, William Appleman Williams, Herbert Marcuse and Robert Crumb were all American. Our jeans were American. The most articulate critics of America - the most articulate people on earth, and the most liberal - were American. The America of my most avid anti-American phase was the America of my first rational adult heroes. That paradox, greatly modified though it is, animates me still.

Although Don Watson is talking about Vietnam and a different generation of Americans, I know exactly what he means. My heroes would be Jack Kerouac, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Cruise in Top Gun and Bob Mould; the Prince of Darkness would be Ronald Reagan. Even so it is uncanny how well he articulates the schizophrenic relationship most of the inhabitants of the rest of the world has with America.

The introduction to Don's American Journey contains some of the best writing you will find about the USA. The account of his travels is fascinating and entertaining, but doesn't quite match up to the power, clarity and simplicity of his initial thoughts.

It starts well, with a visit to New Orleans soon after Hurricane Katrinia, where he seems equally bemused by the inept government response and by the religious volunteers who stepped in to fill the void. The journey loses a bit of focus after that and, although he is an interesting travel companion, what he encounters isn't always that interesting. The historical detail is excellent, there are some wonderful asides and he does visit some fascinating places that don't often figure in travel itineraries, but if I was feeling uncharitable I would say it often felt more like a publisher's advance in search of an odyssey rather than the other way round.

But don't let that put you off. It is still a great read, even it doesn't quite live up to the promise of the first thirteen pages. And Watson is particularly good on America's mind-boggling contradictions, its immense diversity and intricate social structures. He also captures the spirit of the populace's optimism and potential, as he says: 'one also sees startling unselfconscious acts of grace and generosity that might only be possible when something childlike and raw remains in the spirit of the place'.

Grykes and clints

Moving from truly remote and relatively untouched corners of Scotland to the Burren in Ireland and on to the English countryside, Robert Macfarlane discovers and describes wild places in all their many manifestations –

Certainly, these islands possessed wild places on massive scales ... but my original idea that a wild place had to be somehow outside history, which had failed to fit the complicated pasts of the Scottish and Irish landscapes, seemed even more improper in an English context. English wildness existed in the main as Nash's 'unseen landscapes': it was there, if carefully looked for, in the bend of a stream valley, in the undercut of a riverbank, in copses and peat hags, hedgerows and quicksand pools. And it was there in the margins, interzones, and rough cusps of the country: quarry rim, derelict factory, and motorway verge.

The writing is poetic, lyrical, erudite and often all of these in a paragraph or less. The extract below, explaining how physics and climatic conditions combine to make the air in certain locations particularly clear, is a wonderful example:

On the north-western coasts of Britain and Ireland, the air has a remarkable transparency, for it is almost free of particulate matter. Little loose dust rises from the wet land, and the winds blow prevailingly off the sea. Through such air, photons can proceed without obstacle. The light moves, unscattered, and falls upon the forms and objects of those regions with candour.

Other passages that particularly touched me were his description of squirrels creating their own electric blankets using phone lines near his friend Roger Deakin's home (page 215); the explanation of how human eyes work at night (page 200) and his descriptions of sleeping outside in various locations. The latter bringing back memories of a soft, warm August night spent sleeping on a bed of heather in the middle of the Cairngorms and a snug but damp snow cave near the summit of Ben Lawers.

Constantly thought-provoking, near the end he touches upon the wild places which have been reclaimed by nature from man's clutches and presciently notes that:

Abandoned places such as these provide us not only with images of the past but also with visions of the future. As the climate warms, and as human populations begin to fall, increasing numbers of settlements will be abandoned. Inland drought and rising sea-levels on the coasts will force exoduses. And wildness will return to these forsaken places.

I always find it comforting to think that the Earth will easily outlast humanity and at some point in the future all traces of mankind will cease to exist. This remarkable diagram shows how long this process would actually take if all mankind disappeared tomorrow –

Apologies for the quality, but the original article [Times online] no longer has the diagram.

And, just in case you were wondering, a gryke is a vertical fissure in limestone pavement which has been worn out by water erosion and a clint is a glacially polished horizontal surface of limestone pavement.