Abstract

Travel Betrays the Man

The article focuses on three books based on travel. "Days in the Sun," by Martin Anderson Nexö "On Mediterranean Shores," by Emil Ludwig; "Other Ways and Other Flesh," by Edith O'Shaughnessy. It is a curious fact that the travel books of a well-known author frequently reveal more about the writer than they do about his subject. In his novels or his biographies he may keep himself out of sight, may be the detached artist and conceal the man. But let him travel and he is betrayed. He becomes one with every student who can scrape together the money for a third-class ticket to Southampton, New York. His observations are just as personal, his information just as much shaped by his own cast of mind. By his account of his travels you may know the man just as surely as you can recognize your neighbors in their descriptions.