Why Make Tourism Out of Observing the Suffering of Others?

 Come See the Mountain by Tom Zoellner (DECA: 2014)

I've been blown away by the quality of the work published by DECA in its first year in existence. While I hate telling anyone that anything is a "must read," I will break my own rule to tell you that COME SEE THE MOUNTAIN is, in fact, a must read. Some of you are aware that, bored by tourism where one travels to a place of beauty, or to relax in the sun, or to learn where one has come from, or any of the various things we do on vacation to escape the mundane qualities of the 9-5 life, certain privileged travelers have opted to see how the other half lives.

As a way of doing something "interesting," this new wave of tourists goes to places where they can observe horror. Auschwitz has long been on the horror tour, but these days, one can tour the slums of Mumbai, the favelas of Brazil, the charnel houses of Rwanda, places where something "interesting" happen(ed). Zoellner documents his experience with a group of tourists who come to Potosi, a silver mine in South America where it is estimated that eight million miners died between 1545 and 1900 in order to sate our lust for silver.

The tourists are not interested in saving anyone. They don't go to these places with the intention of doing something about suffering on such a scale; rather, they venture to such a place as Potosi to have the experience. And later, when they're back snug and warm in their bars and pubs, they can tell their friends that they have seen true suffering--they've experienced it--because of the 2.5 hours they spent crawling underground where men spend their entire lives digging out the silver.

Zoellner does a fantastic job of writing in that, while I was outraged, again, at the lengths that people with too much money and not compassion will do to entertain themselves, Zoellner is not overtly critical of those he traveled with. He tells the story and leaves it up to the reader to fashion his or her own reaction to the idea of tourists who mistake profundity with observing the suffering of others. The miners are objects to be examined, and, as if the miners were trained animals, tourists are encouraged to buy them treats that they can give to the miners for their willingness to let themselves be looked at.

Zoellner's writing is first-rate. My only critique was that I wanted to know more about this topic. When I finished the essay, I wanted to read more about these types of tourism. Perhaps that's the purpose of the essay. It made me want to know more while also moving me to sympathy for the miners, and disgust with the tourists for whom verisimilitude is close enough to real suffering for them.

When DECA did its original crowdfunding campaign over a year ago, little did I know that my $25 would bring me so much good writing. I anticipate each piece. My hope is that, after they have published their first ten or so long-form journalistic pieces, they will collect them and publish them in a hard copy book. Last semester, I wanted to assign this particular essay to my class. Since many of them did not have e-readers, it wasn't possible. But I hope that they are so successful that they will be able to offer hard copies for those who haven't gone digital.

We Regret to Inform You that communication is hard for the characters in Tim Fredrick's collection

Tim Fredrick proves himself to be a risk-taker as a writer. In his collection of short stories, WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU, Fredrick tackles a number of character voices and a variety of short fiction styles, but the theme that runs through many of these tales is a sense of just how difficult it is for Joe Everyman to express himself.

"We regret to inform you" might have come from a number of his characters' mouths.  In each case, the act of speaking is itself an act of regret. In "By the Stream on Moving Day," his protagonist feels the ache implicit in the definition of nostalgia when he meets up with his childhood best friend, Henry, who, on their last day together as kids, put his toe in the water, testing whether what Henry felt was sexual love. When the narrator, who may be named "Buddy," hears Henry admit that this may have been the moment when he realized he was gay, Buddy chokes on a piece of ice, incapable of revealing whether he felt the same way. In "Egg and Spoon," Jim seeks a Guinness World Record and his brother's affection by carrying an egg in a spoon around and around the local high school track. And in "Thawed," my favourite story, Fredrick imagines that while hundred-year old corpses brought back from being cryogenically frozen may be cured of the disease that would have killed them, the process can do nothing to cure the prejudices they went into suspended animation with.

Fredrick plays with second person narration in "A Tale of Five Thousand Erections," which is great, unless the you being addressed is female. "This One Night in the Bar Where I Work's" stream-of-consciouness narration feels shallow, until you realize that the fight at the center of it is itself banal.

Overall, Fredrick shows terrific promise as a storyteller, and I'm curious to see where his writing takes him next. One thing is for sure, Fredrick is not limited by the boundaries of gender and sexuality. He tries on different writing styles as one does clothes--some of the pieces are not all that flattering, but at the end of the day, there's an eclectic wardrobe filling the shelf.