Customer Reviews

Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places of The World

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Pico Iyer's prose caught my eye in his Time Magazine columns where he did a good job showing us how recognizable the exotic has become. This collection, his first in book form, again reiterates that the most difficult aspect of long distance travel is not any longer how to get there, how to dodge danger or how to find your way back but how to avoid to bump into the same features you left 10,000 miles and 6 timezones earlier. Showing through many examples, sometimes hilarious and sometimes profoundly sad how globalisation regurgitates the same marketing ideas dressed in different flags it really makes its point that the era of the curious gentleman(woman) traveler looking for exotic shores has been overtaken by the vastly less romantic quest to escape the onslaught of canned icons in any neck of the woods.
The book also does a nice job of illuminating the paradoxical quest of the overfed and understimulated prestigious first world traveler trying to find hidden corners where there is still some sort of exploration possible and where not all laws of our structured civilization apply only to be greeted by the not so happy natives who are dying to know how to join the West or in the least purchase its most potent logos.

I have to admit I'm a sucker for all travel narratives. I have a serious travel jones myself, and since I'm not in a position to jet all over the world right now, I have to armchair travel. Pico Iyer was recommended highly to me by a fellow armchair traveler so I set about this book with some high expectations.

The downside of this book is that he's writing about a number of places I'm likely not to visit-North Korea, Cuba, Paraguay-but after a few chapters my disappointment at reading about "lonely places" that will remain unvisited by me gradually fell away as Iyer's style became more comfortable for me.

He refers to classic travel writers frequently, and if you haven't read these authors, some of the references lose their impact, but Iyer's observations are so detailed, so full of atmosphere, that you don't necessarily get a picture of the country he's visiting, but a total feeling that's larger than the individual portraits he presents. I get the feeling he genuinely loves the people and the places he's visited and doesn't see them as part of some journalistic assignment he has to get through.

The easiest read of the three books of Iyer's that I have read. Five of his eight destinations were places about which I had never read anything other than a description in the almanac. What makes Iyer's writing so appealing to me is that he accepts with equanimity the poor conditions that other top travel writers, such as Paul Theroux, devote such energy to bemoaning. Even if it weren't so well written, I would recommend this book for the originality of its material.

Pico's short book is full of sharp and witty humor conjugated with intelligent insightful observations. He combines day-to-day anecdotes, personal interactions and socio-political prose with amazing dexterity. The background information provided for each lonely country visited by Pico is pretty amazing.
I have traveled to some of these lonely places and can almost relive my travel experiences after reading his book (though he traveled almost a decade before I did). With every passing chapter, I could observe a progressive improvement in Pico's writing style. Essays from Argentina, Paraguay and Bhutan are very interesting. He comes into his own with the concluding essay on Australia.

Pico Iyer has a poetic style, Tim Cahill is compassionate, and P.J. O'Rourke is down and dirty. But all three have written excellent travel essays, sometimes on the same places. My recommendation is to read "Falling Off the Map", and Iyer's earlier book, "Video Night in Kathmandu", and then read "Holidays in Hell" by O'Rourke and any book by Cahill for other takes on the same turf. Overall, you'll get a very well-rounded picture of some lands that you might never want to visit, but which are fascinating in their own, dysfunctional, way.

Much better than I thought it would. I really gained insight on the people of these places as well as the places themselves. I now would want to visit some of them. Others never---which is the point.

What can you say about essayist Pico Iyer, whose humor truly shines through in this collection of eight expeditions to places never visited? North Korea. Iceland. Bhutan. Paraguay, to name a few. All of Iyer's anecdotes are interesting, detailed and often down-right funny. Iyer treks to those places you know exist but are likely never to see for yourself; those places in the news but not in the travel plans; those non-vacation spots for the occidental tourist. And he describes all of them in a way both funny and profound. For instance, he says of Reykjavik, Iceland: It "might almost be a small child's toy, as clean and perfect as a ship inside a bottle. ... Reykjavik is one place where it really is worth climbing the steeple of the highest church to see the city, mute and motionless, laid out against the silver sea." Pages later, he says: "In summer when I visited, people were complaining of a heat wave when the temperature hit a chilly 54 degrees." In short, the book is worthy of a gander. It'll make you laugh, think, and want to travel - just not necessarily to the places he describes:)

In "Falling Off the Map", Pico Iyer's tales of wanderlust transport the reader to North Korea, Argentina, Cuba, Iceland, Bhutan, Vietnam, Paraguay and Australia, all of which are Lonely Places outside the world's mainstream either by choice, geography or circumstance. I was a bit surprised that no country on the African continent was included, as I have to believe that some backwaters of one or another decayed, European, colonial empire have acquired independence to become, well, backwaters by other names. Perhaps Pico hasn't looked at an atlas lately, or he didn't find the prospect of the Dark Continent's climate particularly appealing.

Because Vietnam monopolized so much of America's collective consciousness in the 60's and 70's, the chapter dedicated to that country was, to me, the most informative and intriguing - and I didn't even serve there, or anywhere near it, during my years with the U.S. Navy. Though ostensibly a communist state, Iyer is careful to note that Vietnam's lingering animosity is with the Chinese, not the U.S., even though it was the latter that bombed, defoliated and napalmed the country for years. Americans, and their $, are most welcome. I've decided that I owe it to myself to visit the place, just to see the patch of real estate that we made such a fuss over.

The author's observations of all the Lonely Places are recorded as viewed through lenses of keen perception and dry humor. He was, after all, born British. In "Falling Off the Map", Iyer has accomplished what I think most travel writers set out to do, i.e., convince their readers to see for themselves what will otherwise remain simply as mental images conjured from a page. Though I will likely never visit all, or even a minority, of these quirky locales, I really wish I could.

Since the stories in this book are mostly over twenty years old, they tend to be more like an historical or anthropological examination of these places that Iyer visited in the late 1980s. The two vignettes from North Korea and Cuba are the most worth reading because not that much has changed in these places since the stories were written.

The other stories, especially on Australia and Argentina are like ancient history. So much has happened in both places over the last twenty years that the writings seems to be from a time capsule of alternate history.

Zeb Kantrowitz

Pico Iyer has a keen eye and great facility with words, and therefore his books always make for great reading. "Falling off the map," is a book that describes at lenght about some lonely places in the world. He has an uncanny knack of painting a vivid portrait that instally transports you to these places.

Iyer defines lonley places as those places that are not the topic of conversation at any international dinner tables. These places are "shy,defensive,curious places: places that do not know how they are supposed to behave." And Iyer convices us in that in this ever-shrinking world such placs still exist: Cuba, Iceland, Bhutan, Vietnam and others.

The minute I finished reading the book, I wanted to go these lonely and interesting places that Iyer talks about in this book. But, that was just a passing thought, and then harsh reality intruded and I started to fret about creature comforts, food, transportion etc.Visiting these places is not for the faint-hearted with weak stomachs.

If you can brave these places like Iyer did, you are a lucky person, but if you are like the masses that like to sit in the comfort of a lazybody of the living room and indulge in arm-chair travelling then this is a must-read book. That is precisely what I did. I derived great vicarious pleasure by reading this book.

But, alas Iyer made his expedition to these lonely places over a decade ago, and since then things have changed in some of these lonely places, and they are fast becoming the new destination for regular travellers. There is some hope for me in this changing travelling trend ...perhaps, I can get to visit these places in my lifetime.