Writing the Journey: June 1999

"Down Under: Immersion and Authenticity in Australian Travel Narratives"

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Susan Lucas
Literature and Environment Program, English Department
University of Nevada, Reno
slucas@unr.edu

Dean MacCannell asserts that "Modern man has been condemned to look elsewhere, everywhere, for his authenticity, to see if he can catch a glimpse of it reflected in the simplicity, poverty, chastity or purity of others." My paper "Down Under: Immersion and Authenticity in Australian Travel Narratives" takes as its subject this search for authenticity. Robyn Davidson's Tracks (1980) and Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines (1987) depict their individual experiences of seeking authenticity in desert environments. Specifically, I examine Davidson's passage through the desert track called the "Gun Barrel" and Chatwin's ascent of Mount Liebler as authentic experience. While each writer is concerned with obtaining a better understanding of Aboriginal concepts, it is not simply the desire to "get in with the natives"-- as MacCannell might suspect -- that enables them to achieve a degree of authenticity. Rather, Chatwin and Davidson physically engage the land by walking in it and undertake what Jim Armstrong defines as true travel: travel "in space, rather than time," travel requiring physical vulnerability. Authenticity, then, is not comprised in a specific object or locale but resides in a particular cognizance and mobility: one that values space over time and employs an "openness, a willingness to put the body at risk, at least to risk its exposure."

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Susan Lucas
Literature and Environment Program,
English Deptartment/098,
University of Nevada, Reno,
Reno, NV 89557-0031.
Tel: (775) 784-6630
Fax: (775) 784-6626
slucas@unr.edu

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Updated May 23, 1999