The Art of Travel

On Anticipation

1.

It was hard to say when exactly winter arrived. The decline was gradual, like that of a person into old age, inconspicuous from day to day until the season became an established, relentless reality. First came a dip in evening temperatures, then days of continuous rain, confused gusts of Atlantic wind, dampness, the fall of leaves and the changing of the clocks though there were still occasional moments of reprieve, mornings when one could leave the house without a coat and the sky was cloudless and bright. But they were like false signs of recovery in a patient upon whom death has already passed its sentence. By December the new season was entrenched, and the city was covered almost every day by an ominous steel-grey sky, like one in a painting by Mantegna or Veronese, the perfect backdrop to the crucifixion of Christ or to a day beneath the bedclothes. The neighbourhood park became a desolate spread of mud and water, lit up at night by rain-streaked street lamps. Passing it one evening during a downpour, I recalled how, in the intense heat of the previous summer, I had stretched out on the ground and let my bare feet slip out of my shoes to caress the grass, and how this direct contact with the earth had brought with it a sense of freedom and expansiveness, summer breaking down the usual boundaries between indoors and out and allowing me to feel as much at home in the world as in my own bedroom.

But now the park was foreign once more, the grass a forbidding arena in the incessant rain. Any sadness I might have felt, any suspicion that happiness or understanding was unattainable, seemed to find ready encouragement in the sodden dark-red brick buildings and low skies tinged orange by the city's streetlights.

Such climatic circumstances, together with a sequence of events that occurred at around this time (and seemed to confirm Chamfort's dictum that a man must swallow a toad every morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more

ALAIN DE BOTTON is the author of On Love, The Romantic Movement, Kiss and Tell, How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Consolations of Philosophy and, most recently, Status Anxiety. His work has been translated into twenty languages. He lives in London.

A jewel of civility, wit and insight; de Botton has produced wondrous essays. An invitation to hyperbole ... a volume to give one an expansive sense of wonder. The Baltimore Sun

Illuminating ... a lovely combination of enthusiasm, sensitivity, a care for the large and small, and the local and the foreign ... reading de Botton s book will help a person discover something fabulous in everyday." Chicago Tribune

There is something Proustian in The Art of Travel, in the best sense, for Mr. de Botton is a kind of flaneur, strolling through his subject thoughtfully and offering nuanced truths based on his reading, experience and philosophical temperament. The Wall Street Journal

It would be difficult to name a writer as erudite and yet as reader friendly ... With a wry, self-deprecating charm, he passes his enthusiasms along in such manner that you can t help being delighted by them. The Seattle Times

[R]efreshing and profoundly readable.... Thanks to de Botton s detailed and thoughtful writing, coupled with his clever curiosity, The Art of Travel has the potential to enrich not only our journeys, but also our lives. The Philadelphia Inquirer
 
[De Botton] relates even the most disappointing experiences with delightful wit, graceful prose and surprising insight. The Los Angeles Times
 
Wickedly funny ... De Botton travels like the rest of us, but he brings with him the amazing erudition, crisp, lovely prose, and entertaining intellect that made How Proust Can Change Your Life and The Consolations of Philosophy such phenomenal successes. The Boston Globe
 
[E]xudes erudition and artfulness.... Delightful. Minneapolis Star-Tribune
 
[A] wonderful book: inventive, witty, intelligent, and beautifully written. At its best, its prose achieves the intensity of aphorism ... provocative and insightful ... teeming with tantalizing detail. The Boston Phoenix
 
Charmingly and capably convinces us how unaware most of us are