The One Book (or Two) to Take on a Two-Week Trip

…That is the question. For the last two weeks of the year I’ll be traveling throughout Sri Lanka. This means Negombo’s sleepy beaches, Colombo’s urban hubbub, Hatton’s mountains, and the interior hill valley of Dambulla. Also Trincomalee’s sleepy beaches.

Because I have an irrational fear of being without a book, I tend to overpack. But not this time. This time I’m going to bring exactly the right amount of books. And hopefully the right books, too.

I should mention my restrictions. I haven’t checked a bag at an airport in almost seven years; I don’t plan on starting now. So it’s a duffel bag with space for a maximum of two thick nonfiction books. (Why nonfiction? I’ve found I absorb far too much of the world of the novel when I travel, and not enough of the actual world around me.)

Here’s my shortlist:

Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace by D.T. Max

Pro: This has been on my t0-read pile all year, even more so after the chorus of hosannas from DFW fans and literary critics.
Con: It’s only 300 pages, and I’ve been told it reads briskly. There’s nothing worse than burning through your vacation reads too quickly.

Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story by Jim Holt 

Pro: Ideas! Life! Philosophy! A perfect compendium for a holiday “off the grid,” as it were. This one’s also on the slim side page-wise, but I have to assume it’s dense enough for a fortnight of reading.
Con: This is the opposite of the traditional beach read.

The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka & the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers by Gordon Weiss

Pro: Just published in the U.S. by the wonderful Bellevue Literary Press, this is one of the few nonfiction accounts of the 25-year civil war between the Hindu Tamil minority and the Buddhist Sinhalese majority. (Fingers crossed the New Yorker‘s John Lee Anderson is working on one too.)
Con: Would you want to read about human rights atrocities committed in the very town you’re staying in for the first time?

The Rule of Law by Tom Bingham

Pro: Nick Harkaway’s endorsement in his “Year in Reading” column for The Millions was very selling: “Basically indispensable if you consider yourself an active and engaged citizen of a democratic nation. Cogent, elegant, clear, and simple – and short, which is a wonder – it’s absolutely required reading. Trust me: just pick it up and look at a little bit. Then tell me you don’t care about what he’s saying. (You won’t. You’ll buy the book and follow his lucid discussion to the end.)”
Con: Could be a bit dry.

All suggestions welcome! What would you bring on  a long trip?

A Hero’s Obituary

If you take every risk offered, if you break world records, if you meet luminaries wherever you go, and if you’re credited with saving thousands of lives, you still won’t live as full a life as John Cooper Fitch.

This one’s fake. Fitch’s is real, and better.

A few highlights from his New York Times obituary:

In 1939, he used a small inheritance to hop a freighter for Europe and found his way to London, where he fell in love with a ballet dancer and lived with Communist intellectuals in grain barges on the Thames.

Enlisting in the Army Air Forces in 1941, he went on to fly a P-51 Mustang and shot down a German Messerschmitt Me 262, the first operational jet fighter, as it was taking off. He was later shot down himself and spent three months in P.O.W. camps.

After the war, as a member of Palm Beach society, he started racing yachts. He liked to tell the story of how he met the Duke of Windsor at one soiree: they were relieving themselves on a bush at the time. The duke became a friend.

…

The horror of the crash motivated Mr. Fitch to develop safety barriers, including one for the walls of racetracks to deflect a car and soften its impact. For the highway barrier, he began with liquor crates, filling them with different amounts of sand and then crashing into them himself at speeds of up to 70 m.p.h. to figure out what worked best.

In addition to saving lives, the Fitch Inertial Barrier — typically consisting of yellow sand-filled plastic barrels — saves an estimated $400 million a year in property damage and medical expenses, the National Science Foundation says.

…

Mr. Fitch led Chevrolet’s mid-1950s effort to make the Corvette a serious contender in racing. He began by setting a land speed record for the car’s class at Daytona Beach in Florida, exceeding 145 m.p.h. He raced competitively until 1966.

Mr. Fitch helped develop the Lime Rock Park racecourse in Lakeville, Conn., carving it out of a potato field, and then managed it. His friend Paul Newman raced there.

Portland Maine Is Better at Foursquare Than You Are

On a recent trip up to Portland, ME, I was compelled to take screenshots of the following truly excellent Foursquare tips. I have used the mobile social network for a few years now in NYC and have never witnessed such consistent hilarity.

 

Living Through Books at SXSW

Perhaps it was the upending-nature of travel, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was living inside two different novels during my week in Austin.

The first one is obvious if you’re read it: James Hynes’ Next. His protagonist Kevin Quinn flies to Austin from Michigan for a job interview, and spends most of the novel walking the city and idly stalking a young woman he met on the plane. (This novel is excellent, with a moving final chapter that elevates the book from entertaining to indelible.) Adding to the surreality  was a tweet from the author himself, recommending some good local taco joints. (I can vouch for Torchy’s.)

The second novel would be Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad. You might think I’d have the experimental work on the brain, what with all the forward-thinking SXSW panels (one chapter’s written entirely in PowerPoint).

It’s more because Egan so perfectly captures the feeling of being electrified by live music. I was lucky enough to catch Jack White’s parking lot concert, and it felt a lot like a couple of the shows in Goon Squad.

Additionally, her hopscotch approach to time dovetailed with my inability to remember what day it was. The concept of “Monday” doesn’t apply to your third fifteen-hour day of conferences and networking “parties.” A week of SXSW feels like a month everywhere else.

My South by Southwest

South by Southwest is very intimidating for the rookie. It’s taken me ten hours and eight beers, but I finally pored over the list of panels, parties, and after-party panels; I have my schedule. The following is a tentative list of what’s in store for me next week in Austin.

• Will We Still Be Using Questions in Panel Titles? A Look Ahead to SXSW 2014
• The Moleskine Lounge: Demo the hot app for 2011, the Moleskine notepad app. (Only $9.99!)
• Foursquare Cash Cab with Naveen
• Seth Godin’s Keynote: Bloodied Spears, or When Tribes Go Too Far at the Weekend Team-Building Retreat
• I’ve been told by several people to avoid the Five Loko Beta Testing Party (including a very regretful Alice Cooper). Still: tempted.
• The 2009 Retro Room, Presented by AOL: Sit on couches, talk about the recession, and charge your AT&T iPhone 3Gs.
• Super Secret Reading by Thomas Pynchon. Cancelled.
• Rumor has it that the Internet Academy is announcing new character and alphanumerics for URLs. I’m standing in line at 4am to register www.!.com.
• Some guy named Doc Brown is hyping after-market accessories for vintage 1980s cars. I don’t know much about it, but he plans on putting his dog in the front seat, then slamming on the accelerator or something. People in 2021 said it was impressive.
• The Crazy Derek Austin Walking Tour, to be wirelessly transmitted into participants’ ears through loud screaming by an inebriated elderly man.
• The Absolut Vomitorium. (RSVP now!)
• Wordr Demo, a desktop program that removes the “e” from every -er suffix in your emails, Word documents, and PDFs.
• The Toyota Allosaurus Shuttle: The Japanese auto manufacturer will provide complimentary transportation between Austin’s hottest bars and restaurants from 8am to 10pm daily, via lab-built late Jurassic abominations of science exclusive to SXSW Interactive. To be followed by the Guy Fieri “Sauce-O-Saurus” Mountain Dew BBQ on the 15th.

I’ll post pictures throughout.