Department of English
Writing the Journey: June 1999
"Good Form: Peter Fleming's Brazilian Adventure"
Philip Krummrich
University of Georgia
pkrummri@arches.uga.edu
Peter Fleming published Brazilian Adventure in the early thirties, at a time when a great many memoirs of the experiences of Englishmen in the tropics had already appeared. From the first pages of the book, he shows an acute awareness of the problems of genre, convention, and originality. With a maturity remarkable in so young a writer, he works out the theoretical and practical problems of writing a readable book in a genre that many might have considered to be exhausted.
On the one hand, he endeavors to enlist the sympathy of the jaded reader by poking gentle fun at many of the cliches of the subgenre of jungle adventure writing. For example, he ridicules the habit of many authors of besprinkling their pages liberally with exotic words when perfectly suitable English equivalents are available. Then, with the literary equivalent of an abashed shrug, he turns around and does the same thing himself. He parodies the spine-chilling portrayal of the jungle as a place oozing and dripping with snakes, first describing a reptile farm in lavish and slithery detail, and then concluding: "The whole time I was up in the interior I never saw a snake of any sort." Most importantly, he loses no chance to deflate the members of the expedition--including himself--and the entire enterprise. It is self-deprecation elevated to an art form, humility with enough humor to be pleasing. On the other hand, he does have some rather gripping adventures to narrate, and the delicate matter of dissension in the group to provide conflict. Despite his self-conscious reflections on the absurdities of the genre, he is far from paralyzed. After all, if his purpose had been to produce a mere parody, a couple of pages in Punch would have sufficed. Fleming sustains his narrative through more than four hundred pages. Thus, while on one level he indulges in self-mockery and plays with the conventions of the genre, on another level he shows that it is still possible to write a corking tale of travel and adventure.
My approach will feature close analyses of Fleming's parodies of earlier travel writers, considering whether he is lampooning specific but unnamed authors or, as he implies, the cliches of such writing in general. I will consider the self-image which Fleming crafts, and the ways in which he establishes himself as a sympathetic and non-threatening protagonist. I will study how he shifts from humorous send-up to adventure narrative without any awkward discontinuity. In my conclusion, I expect to comment at some length on the theory of travel writing as a genre that emerges from the work of this highly self-conscious, widely-read, and extraordinarily gifted writer.
Dr. Philip Krummrich
University of Georgia
pkrummri@arches.uga.edu (815) 753-6609
abbey@inil.com or azink@niu.edu
RETURN TO CONFERENCE SPEAKERS, TITLES AND PROGRAM
Updated May 23, 1999