I recently told a newish friend who had come to coffee that I’d always had a fancy to explore America’s central states. I meant the ones where Real Americans live and there are no tourists – perhaps a road trip from Chicago to Louisiana like the one Stephen Fry did for TV in an old London taxi. Not, as I said to her, that it’s likely to happen now. I’m not cut out to be a lone traveller and I’d probably find all those miles a bit tiring these days. “Oh,” she said, “You should read Jonathan Raban’s Old Glory: An American Voyage”. So I did.
Jonathan Raban, who died in 2023, sailed down the Mississippi in a 16-foot boat with a 15 hp engine in 1979. He and the river pass through ten states. His book was published in 1981 so 45 years have passed and I read it with sense of nostalgia because I bet it’s not quite like that now in these days of mass communication. On the other hand, he writes so graphically that I felt I too had journeyed from Minneapolis to beyond New Orleans on the Delta so perhaps I don’t need to do it after all – the best sort of travel writing. The only places on his voyage that I have actually been to are New Orleans (and done the obligatory paddle steamer tourist thing) and I’ve stood in awe on the banks of the Mississippi at a few quieter spots in Louisiana as, on a road trip we headed towards Mississippi state. Otherwise, it was all new to me.
The Mississippi is a character. It has a personality and moods. Again and again, Raban is told he has to respect its “boils”, currents, swamps and the like because many people have died there. In places it’s several miles wide. It others it churns along. There are islands and many hazards. Raban, though, has come because of an illustration he loved in a childhood book. He’s also attuned to Huckleberry Finn and historical books about the river which he carries with him – along with navigational charts. He is determined but far from fearless. Sometimes the water looks silky. At other times it’s oily or angry. And he soon discovers that he really can’t sail safely at night. Storms, moreover, are terrifying.
His craft, fitted out for him by a cheerful chap named Herb, who gives him a few navigation lessons before he sets off, is very small so he doesn’t sleep on board. That means he stops off at towns en route where he meets hundreds of people. He has a knack for getting people to talk to him – fishermen, mayors, police, bar tenders, radio stations, hoteliers, an old lady in a care home and many more. What he’s doing is very unusual, so people notice him and, often, know he’s coming or that he’s around. Many are very hospitable. His discussions with them paint a kaleidoscopic picture of some very insular places and attitudes.
At the same time, although he doesn’t labour it, Raban, aged 37, is trying to escape from demons of his own. His father came back from the war, struggled to form loving relationship with the son he found at home and eventually became an authoritarian Anglican clergyman. So church is in Raban’s blood although he’s an unbeliever. Wherever he goes on his river trip he picks a local church each Sunday – various denominations – and attends a service as a way of getting the flavour of local thinking. He is very good indeed, for example, on Otis Higgs – a preacher trying at the time to become the first black mayor of Memphis but, ultimately failing by a narrow margin. Raban sees Higgs in action in both capacities and marvels at the difference. He meets him and talks to him too.
Because this is 1979 the local vocabulary is striking. One man tells Raban that he simply can’t get used to being referred to as “a black man”. I’m a —-” he says using the word which has become the most emotive in the language and which I dare not type for fear of being banned by some social media algorithm. “That’s what I am and it’s fine” the man declares. The word casually occurs a lot in Raban’s conversations with locals. Raban himself uses “negro” as a non-pejorative descriptor. It’s another word, which simply means “black” (from Latin) which we’re now not allowed to use. I suspect many of the new friends Raban makes on river would be surprised at the lexical turn things have taken half a century later.
Raban cuts a solitary, sometimes lonely figure. Twice during the course of this book he meets a woman he’s attracted to. He even moves in with the second one for a while. He’s evidently good company. Wherever he goes people make him welcome and his friendship with the captain of the tow boat which transports him on the final dangerous stretch down to Baton Rouge is quite moving. But it isn’t always like that. His almost getting knifed by an aggressive (disturbed) man in a bar who mistakes Raban for a “Fed” is pretty scary.
This book is a fabulous geography lesson. It’s also full of history and tucked into the mix are, of course, geology, botany and more. Very accessible to read, it’s also a compelling and beautifully written quest story complete with the “stations” which always provide a framework for quest stories in the tradition of The Odyssey and Pilgrim’s Progress. Raban is questing for the Gulf Of Mexico. He’s also trying to find himself, as questors always are. And he does.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: The Book of Fire by Christy Lefteri
