[gps-talkusers] A Sense of the World
- From: Lisa Yayla <fnugg@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: gps-talkusers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 11:39:21 +0200
Hi,
This is also a bit off topic but is in the realms of great travelers.
Sending a book review about James Holman, blind, who in 1822 set off to
travel the world, " racking up at least 250,000 miles".
Regards,
Lisa
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/06/04/RVGUEJ2MM11.DTL&type=books
A BLIND MAN SEES THE WORLD
In the 1800s, illness robbed James Holman of his sight but that didn't
stop him from traveling -- or writing
Reviewed by Jeff Greenwald
Sunday, June 4, 2006
A Sense of the World
How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler
By Jason Roberts
HARPERCOLLINS; 382 PAGES; $26.95
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On July 19, 1822, 36-year-old James Holman, a former lieutenant in the
Royal Navy, set off to do what no casual traveler had attempted before:
circumambulation of the world.
Leaving from England, Holman would cross the 5,000 miles of tsarist Russia
and enter the frozen wastes of Siberia. From Kamchatka, he would try to
hitch a ride on a whaling boat, hoping to reach first the Sandwich Islands
(now known as Hawaii) and, eventually, the wild North American continent.
"The path would be chosen by circumstance, the means improvised, the
particulars discovered only in the doing," writes Jason Roberts in "A
Sense of the World." "It was less an expedition than an act of
self-abandonment, to faith and fate."
Even today, with airplanes and antibiotics, Holman's proposed journey
seems torturous. To the former naval officer, it was a gleeful prospect --
despite the fact that he was totally blind.
It's easy to see why Roberts (who chanced upon Holman's story in a book
called "Eccentric Travelers" while browsing in a library) became obsessed
with the "celebrated blind traveler." Holman was one of those people whose
moxie, and accumulated mileage, seem incredible even by today's standards.
Holman was 25 when he lost his sight to an unknown illness. He quickly
shook off self-pity and set about breaking every convention and bias
associated with his disability. He put himself through medical school,
became a Naval Knight of Windsor and embarked on a series of travels so
exhaustive that a bare list of his stops would easily consume the 800
words of this review. Using a device called a Noctograph, developed for
writing in the dark (Braille was not invented until 1821), Holman recorded
his adventures and impressions in three published books and a huge,
unpublished (and lost) manuscript.
By the middle of the 19th century, Holman had become the most accomplished
traveler in history -- racking up at least 250,000 miles by ship,
carriage, foot, wagon and even on horseback (he taught himself to ride in
Africa and journeyed briefly into the continent's interior). Marco Polo,
in contrast, covered some 14,000 miles. Ultimately, Holman visited every
inhabited continent, and hundreds of distinct cultures.
"To properly trace his route," writes Roberts of one voyage, "one must
take a map of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, and reduce it to a mass
of scribbles." Holman was not remotely a figure of pity. By the time he
reached Tasmania, he was such a celebrity that local children imitated his
beard by tying opossum tails to their chins. By middle age, Holman was so
self-assured that his ailment was easily overlooked. On a ship bound for
South Africa, he reports that the members of the crew forgot he was blind
and began shouting at him, "as if I were hard of hearing."
Roberts, too, faced the challenge of flying blind. Holman's published work
covers only 14 of his 70 years. And despite his passion for writing, the
Blind Traveler was not an especially good writer, nor a self-revealing
one. Accounts of Holman's early life, in England and the Royal Navy, were
cobbled together from secondhand accounts. Even in his journals Holman was
discreet, says Roberts, "to a fault, obscuring most of the identities of
people he encounters during his adventures -- especially those of women."
Yet the detail in "A Sense of the World" is so palpable, one gets the
feeling that Roberts actually began to channel Holman. This impression is
reinforced by the book's neo-Victorian voice: a risky style sustained by
Roberts' absolute command of language and rhythm. At times it seemed I was
reading not a modern account of Holman but a series of lectures delivered
by his closest friend.
One of the few unsettling things about this biography, in fact, is the
chemistry between author and subject. Roberts is openly in awe of Holman;
he becomes, at times, almost deferential.
Holman was a great man, sometimes even heroic, but he wasn't beyond
reproach. He was capable of using people (especially the hapless Knights
of Windsor, which he fleeced for decades) and clearly knew how to be
cagey, or pushy, when it suited him. But Roberts takes pains to defend
even the smallest transgressions. One gets the feeling that if you uttered
a bad word about Holman in front of Roberts, he'd slap you.
A few sections of the book, like Holman's maritime career, could have
stood a little less naval-gazing. But with the onset of Holman's disease,
we enter fascinating territory. Roberts writes about the reality of
blindness with exceptional clarity, explaining how touch-based (or haptic)
understanding differs from visual perception: "An object yields up its
qualities not all at once, at the speed of light, but successively over
time." For the first time I actually grasped what blindness might be like,
and how radically that state differs from my preconceptions and fears.
Once Holman's travels begin, the pace accelerates, and we meet a
well-stocked menagerie of fellow travelers, literary rivals and kindred
spirits. (My favorite was naturalist François Huber, who, also blind, had
become the world's greatest expert on bees.) Holman himself is, of course,
the ultimate eccentric -- a blind man who insists on climbing live
volcanoes and keeps fit by running alongside his horse-drawn carriage,
holding the end of a string.
"A Sense of the World" is a vastly entertaining, always informative and
often astonishing account. Roberts offers a portrait not just of a
brilliant traveler but also of his age: an era when the globe was still
rife with mysteries, and wit and will more desirable than upgrades.
Was Holman indeed history's greatest traveler? It's an absurdly subjective
accolade, but you might find yourself convinced. Even if he fell short of
completing his around-the-world circuit (foiled, alas, by the czar), the
blind traveler's life journey offers unrivaled inspiration -- and a
cordial challenge -- to anyone touched by wanderlust.
Jeff Greenwald is the author, most recently, of "Scratching the Surface:
Impressions of Planet Earth From Hollywood to Shiraz."
Carl Simmons wrote:
I know this is way off topic, but I am going to do it anyway.
I found this program very interesting and thought the list maybe interested.
There was not a large amount of advertising this program in my area.
Climber Erik Weihenmayer becomes the first blind person to reach the summit
of Mount Everest.
Cast: Peter Facinelli.
Distribution: A&E Television Networks
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Future Airings:
Touch the Top of the World (2006), AETVP Jun 18 10:00pm
Touch the Top of the World (2006), AETVP Jun 19 12:00am
Touch the Top of the World (2006), AETVP Jun 19 02:00am
Touch the Top of the World (2006), AETVP Jun 23 10:00pm
Touch the Top of the World (2006), AETVP Jun 24 02:00am
Touch the Top of the World (2006), AETVP Jun 24 04:00pm
Touch the Top of the World (2006), AETVP Jun 25 12:00pm
Carl Simmons
Sendero Group Training and Technical Support
1-888-757-6810 Ext. 106
carl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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