“Journeys are the midwives of thought…” This quote was said by de Botton. I believe that he’s trying to say that when you’re on a journey you have to develop an artistic way of looking at the world because you need to adapt to the stress and trivial, irritating things that accompany travel. By developing your ability to condense the striking elements of the world and to cast away the trivialities, you will find happiness or peace within yourself. By looking at the world as an artist, everything around you becomes art. When you are thinking creatively, and as an artist, you are able to grasp concepts of the world easier than most people who look past thing that aren’t of usual interest. On page 13 of The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton, he says, “If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination.” I believe that in this quote, de Botton is trying to convey the idea that art is basically a distilled reality. Because art is designed to hold the most interesting or startling perspectives of and reflections on the world, with all the boring bits sucked out, it can end up creating a distorted expectation of reality. Furthermore, when you’ve got an artistic imagination I would say it improves your ability to retain the most critical images from an experience, but as de Botton soon makes a point about, even a human trained to identify powerful images may allow their brain to edit their memories into small, scattered handfuls of single images. I think it’s interesting that he creates this contrast between the beauty of art and the aesthetic appreciation of points of travel that would normally be ignored. That is, while most might try to forget or sleep through the more stupefying parts of the journey, de Botton proudly shows his appreciation for the subtle, ephemeral details – the transitory byproducts of human travel. For instance, when de Botton has started to talk about Edward Hopper (page 47) and his love for the elements of travel and transport: gas stations, hotels, near-empty diners. As de Botton quickly assesses, “Loneliness is the dominant theme here.” Perhaps traveling alone affords one more introspection and opportunity to spend time reflecting on their experiences.
This was certainly the case for Gustave Flaubert. In the first Motives section, On the Exotic, de Botton creates a portrait of the French author of Madame Bovary. I was really impressed at how radical his views were for his time in history. I drew a connection between his total hostility to his own country and love of the exotic to some of the things I hear nowadays, like people who say they’re “colorblind” in an attempt to try and downplay their privilege. It was so rare for someone from that time period to be so dedicated to throwing away pointless affectations and limiting social boundaries like binary sexuality, so I thought his experience was interesting. I wish that de Botton would have included more information about Flaubert throughout the novel, because I found his section to interest me the most, quite honestly. I like to read about strange characters and people who were radical before their time versus someone continually speaking about the same subject using different words. To be quie honest, I am not fond of de Botton as a writer. I find his opinions to be strange and his attitude to be off putting. He does this by using a way of speaking that is hard to understand. The tone of his writing is rude, and it almost feels like he is acting like he has infinite knowledge of everything. I feel that his tone is condescending and because of that it’s hard for me to not become biased while reading this. He uses tiresome language to express extremely facile ideas. This is probably not the most popular opinion of de Botton and his writing, but it is how I feel. I also thought that some sections of the book were consistent, and some tended to meander. The quality of the writing was inconsistent. You could see this inconsistency in the Departure sections 1 and 2. This is mainly where he is describing the details of travel and he is reflecting on it in what I consider to be a rather vapid way.