Not just travel and not just autobiography, although they’re both both, Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence and Down Under by Bill Bryson offer two different approaches to memoir and travel writing. Taking the opportunity to mine their first-hand experiences of living in a place they were not initially familiar with, Mayle and Bryson produced funny and very popular books.
The two books offer alternative ways of experiencing a new country. As a former London advertising executive, Mayle moved with his wife and their two dogs to Provence and began the renovation of a 200-year old farmhouse. His book covers how they coped with the locals, the food, and living in a house undergoing a process of constant if erratic change. Taking on a far larger geographical area, travel writer and interesting-facts explainer Bryson went to Australia not to live for an extended period but in order to write about his travels there.
Writing in the late 1980s, Mayle originally intended to produce a novel based on his time in Provence. But he was so beguiled by his new life that the project foundered and the idea of writing about his real experiences took its place. As Mayle said, ‘The daily dose of education I was receiving at the hands of the plumber, the farmer next door, the mushroom hunter and the lady with the frustrated donkey was infinitely more fascinating than anything I could invent.’
After initial doubts on the part of the publisher, the book went on to become a best-seller, due in part to Mayle being ‘such a brilliant self-promoter’. The marketing plan also included publishing the book in serial form in the British newspaper The Sunday Times, giving readers one excerpt a month and generating keen anticipation for the next instalment.
Although some readers objected to the portrayal of characters they saw as caricatures the book became popular, so popular that it increased tourism in the area. Some visitors wanted to see not just the region, but Mayle’s actual house, and he found himself with frequent uninvited guests keen to experience the same things he himself had.
Despite some critics seeing the book as ‘aspirational lifestyle’ material, its humour is central and comes from Mayle’s depictions of aspects of local life, regional cuisine and the weather. In focusing on these subjects, and writing in the way that he did, Mayle unintentionally created a new type of travel book. Although there was a mixed critical reception the reading public loved it, and it has since become one of the most successful travel books ever written.
Published in the year 2000 (in time for the Sydney Olympics), Bryson’s Down Under was produced in the United States and Canada under the title In a Sunburned Country. The words were taken from Dorothea Mackellar’s well-known Australian poem ‘My Country’, published in the year 1908, whose famous second verse begins, ‘I love a sunburnt country/A land of sweeping plains/ Of ragged mountain ranges/ Of droughts and flooding rains.’
In the course of the book Bryson moves from the cities to the outback, converses with the locals and marvels at the changing landscape and its idiosyncrasies. Due to the short length of time he stayed in each place, Bryon’s encounters with the Australian people are passing, but full of local colour.
The book is divided into three parts: ‘Into the Outback’, where Bryson takes the cross-continent train journey from Sydney to Perth aboard the Indian-Pacific; ‘Civilised Australia’, which includes some historical accounts such as its convict history and tales of economic development; and ‘Around the Edges’, where he visits the Great Barrier Reef and Uluru (formerly Ayers Rock). Not just recording his travel experiences, Bryson incorporates the research he undertook for the book, and recounts tales of 19th century explorers and details of the local flora and fauna. He homes in on the poisonous varieties, saying, ‘No one knows, incidentally, why Australia’s spiders are so extravagantly toxic. … Still, it does mean that everyone gives them lots of space.’
With the book embellished with Bryson’s particular style of humour, and incorporating interesting idiosyncrasies such as Australian slang and unusual place names, Down Under became a best-seller. Although it did not always find critical favour some critics appreciated it, with Sara Wheeler writing, ‘Bryson is such an agreeable, warm-hearted and witty companion that I ended up enjoying this book despite its shortcomings’, and Anthony Jenkins stated that Bryson has ‘painted a masterpiece in travel literature’.
The voices of the authors Mayle and Bryson as well as their experiences create the tone and possibly the success of the two books. Mayle wrote three more titles connected to Provence including Toujours Provence, and Bryson has written several travel books in a similar style to Down Under, such as Notes from a Small Island. It’s the authors as much as their books that keep the readers coming back for more.
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Authors
Peter Mayle; Bill Bryson; Dorothea Mackellar
Titles
A Year in Provence and Toujours Provence by Peter Mayle, Down Under or In a Sunburned Country and Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson, My Country by Dorothea Mackellar
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