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white_hart) wrote2016-03-05 05:10 pm
white_hart) wrote2016-03-05 05:10 pm
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Reading: Walking the Woods and the Water
A couple of years ago perennialanna and I spent a day wondering round Norwich discussing how to survive the zombie apocalypse (loot chemists', B&Q and Bravissimo and head for the Isle of Wight, we decided) and visiting bookshops, one of which was The Book Hive where I bought a copy of Walking the Woods and the Water by Nick Hunt; an account of Hunt's journey across Europe in the footsteps of Patrick Leigh Fermor, beginning in December 2011, exactly 78 years after Leigh Fermor (though taking five and a half months less to complete the trip, possibly because of a lack of Mitteleuropean aristocrats offering prolonged hospitality).
Hunt doesn't quite have Leigh Fermor's innocent charm, perhaps because he's ten years or so older, a writer and journalist deliberately undertaking a project with the intention of writing about it; a professional where Leigh Fermor was an amateur. He also doesn't seem to share Leigh Fermor's interest in the history of the people and cultures he walks through, or maybe he assumes that all of his readers will have read Leigh Fermor already and concentrates instead on what has changed, and what has stayed the same. The changes that 78 years, spanning both World War 2 and the Cold War, have wrought to the world that Leigh Fermor walked through are fascinating to read about; in the Netherlands, Germany and Austria Hunt's commentary on change is a fairly standard narrative of deploring urban sprawl, industrial parks and motorways and the dominance of the car, but when he moves into Eastern Europe (a concept that he points out would have meant nothing to Leigh Fermor in 1934, but which defines the later part of the journey for modern readers) the changes are sometimes subtler but far more wholesale; the world of aristocrats and chateaus that Leigh Fermor describes in Between the Woods and the Water has been utterly and systematically destroyed. When Hunt seeks out the great houses where Leigh Fermor stayed, in company with the great-granddaughter of one of Leigh Fermor's hosts, who describes the harsh treatment her family received at the hands of the Communist regime, he finds some seized by the state and transformed into mental hospitals but the majority in ruins, formal gardens overgrown, while the once-grand spa at Baile Herculanae is seedy and down-at-heel. The contrast to the sunkissed, elegant world of Between the Woods and the Water makes the Hungarian and Romanian section of Walking the Woods and the Water quite a difficult read, and I think I preferred it when he crossed the Danube into Bulgaria and (having undertaken his walk before The Broken Road was published) found himself experiencing the country without the comparison to how things were at the time of Leigh Fermor's journey. Or maybe it's just that Romania's complicated and difficult history makes it a harder place to read about.
Ultimately, I enjoyed the book a lot; it was interesting both as an update on Leigh Fermor and as a reflection of the current state of Europe (even if it did have a bit of a modern-life-is-rubbish vibe to it; googling Hunt reveals that he is involved with a collaborative project which appears to be about the literary and artistic response to the imminent End of Civilisation*, so that's probably par for the course), and some of the descriptive passages of the landscapes Hunt was walking through were beautiful. But reading Leigh Fermor, I got the sense he was having fun and enjoyed his trip immensely, whereas Hunt's sounded as though it was, frankly, a slog**; I wouldn't want to set off in his footsteps as I might in Leigh Fermor's.
*I'm not disputing that the End of Civilisation might not be imminent, and there are a lot of rubbish things about modern life, but on the other hand I'm nearly 42, I still have all my own teeth and not only have I not died in childbirth but I've been able to avoid having children at all. And I've been able have an education and get a job and own property, so I don't think it's all rubbish.
**Of course, Leigh Fermor was writing forty years later, and it may simply be that he'd forgotten the tedium and the blisters and only remembered the good bits.
perennialanna and I spent a day wondering round Norwich discussing how to survive the zombie apocalypse (loot chemists', B&Q and Bravissimo and head for the Isle of Wight, we decided) and visiting bookshops, one of which was The Book Hive where I bought a copy of Walking the Woods and the Water by Nick Hunt; an account of Hunt's journey across Europe in the footsteps of Patrick Leigh Fermor, beginning in December 2011, exactly 78 years after Leigh Fermor (though taking five and a half months less to complete the trip, possibly because of a lack of Mitteleuropean aristocrats offering prolonged hospitality).Hunt doesn't quite have Leigh Fermor's innocent charm, perhaps because he's ten years or so older, a writer and journalist deliberately undertaking a project with the intention of writing about it; a professional where Leigh Fermor was an amateur. He also doesn't seem to share Leigh Fermor's interest in the history of the people and cultures he walks through, or maybe he assumes that all of his readers will have read Leigh Fermor already and concentrates instead on what has changed, and what has stayed the same. The changes that 78 years, spanning both World War 2 and the Cold War, have wrought to the world that Leigh Fermor walked through are fascinating to read about; in the Netherlands, Germany and Austria Hunt's commentary on change is a fairly standard narrative of deploring urban sprawl, industrial parks and motorways and the dominance of the car, but when he moves into Eastern Europe (a concept that he points out would have meant nothing to Leigh Fermor in 1934, but which defines the later part of the journey for modern readers) the changes are sometimes subtler but far more wholesale; the world of aristocrats and chateaus that Leigh Fermor describes in Between the Woods and the Water has been utterly and systematically destroyed. When Hunt seeks out the great houses where Leigh Fermor stayed, in company with the great-granddaughter of one of Leigh Fermor's hosts, who describes the harsh treatment her family received at the hands of the Communist regime, he finds some seized by the state and transformed into mental hospitals but the majority in ruins, formal gardens overgrown, while the once-grand spa at Baile Herculanae is seedy and down-at-heel. The contrast to the sunkissed, elegant world of Between the Woods and the Water makes the Hungarian and Romanian section of Walking the Woods and the Water quite a difficult read, and I think I preferred it when he crossed the Danube into Bulgaria and (having undertaken his walk before The Broken Road was published) found himself experiencing the country without the comparison to how things were at the time of Leigh Fermor's journey. Or maybe it's just that Romania's complicated and difficult history makes it a harder place to read about.
Ultimately, I enjoyed the book a lot; it was interesting both as an update on Leigh Fermor and as a reflection of the current state of Europe (even if it did have a bit of a modern-life-is-rubbish vibe to it; googling Hunt reveals that he is involved with a collaborative project which appears to be about the literary and artistic response to the imminent End of Civilisation*, so that's probably par for the course), and some of the descriptive passages of the landscapes Hunt was walking through were beautiful. But reading Leigh Fermor, I got the sense he was having fun and enjoyed his trip immensely, whereas Hunt's sounded as though it was, frankly, a slog**; I wouldn't want to set off in his footsteps as I might in Leigh Fermor's.
*I'm not disputing that the End of Civilisation might not be imminent, and there are a lot of rubbish things about modern life, but on the other hand I'm nearly 42, I still have all my own teeth and not only have I not died in childbirth but I've been able to avoid having children at all. And I've been able have an education and get a job and own property, so I don't think it's all rubbish.
**Of course, Leigh Fermor was writing forty years later, and it may simply be that he'd forgotten the tedium and the blisters and only remembered the good bits.
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