| Why do we travel? Ostensibly an act of leisure, travel finds us thrusting ourselvesinto jets flying miles above the earth, only to endure dislocations of time and space, foods andlanguages foreign to our body and mind, and encounters with strangers on whom we must suddenlydepend. Travel is not merely a break from routine, it is its antithesis, a voluntary trading in ofthe security one feels at home for unpredictability and confusion. In BewilderedTravel Frederick Ruf argues that this confusion, which we might think of simply as anecessary evil, is in fact the very thing we are seeking when we leave home.Rufrelates this quest for confusion to our religious behavior. Citing William James, who defined thereligious as what enables us to",front life,", Ruf contends that the search for bewildermentallows us to point our craft into the wind and sail headlong into the storm rather than flee fromit. This view challenges the Eliadean tradition that stresses religious ritual as a shield againstthe world's chaos. Ruf sees our departures from the familiar as a crucial component in aspiritual life, reminding us of the central role of pilgrimage in religion. Inaddition to his own revealing experiences as a traveler, Ruf presents the reader with the journeysof a large and diverse assortment of notable Americans, including Henry Miller, Paul Bowles, MarkTwain, Mary Oliver, and Walt Whitman. These accounts take us from the Middle East to thePhilippines, India to Nicaragua, Mexico to Morocco--and, in one threatening instance, simplyto the edge of the author's own neighborhood.",What gives value to travel is fear,", wroteCamus. This book illustrates the truth of that statement. |
