Hanging around in train stations

Pas­sive and ac­tive

First stop is Zaragoza, but be­fore he reaches the big city, the me­an­der­ing trains give him views of the sea, of vine­yards then olive groves, of the Magic Amer­ica Sex Shop, of young women in the “sum­mer uni­form of cut-off jeans”. The beach glimpsed makes him think of the con­flict be­tween Cat­alo­nia and the Span­ish state, as some loud Spaniards had threat­ened to boy­cott Cata­lan hol­i­days. He has to change trains. There is in­dus­trial ac­tion on the rail­ways: in the wait­ing-room, the au­thor asks a man why rail­way work­ers are tak­ing ac­tion. This man com­plains about strikes and politi­cians, nam­ing Jordi Pujol, which leads to four para­graphs on who Pujol is. The trav­eller, now on the sta­tion plat­form, talks to a Pak­istani, Ahmed, who ex­plains his job in a su­per­mar­ket. At last, on a train again, he watches girls clus­ter round a mo­bile and an old man strug­gle alone with one. A grand­mother looks after two chil­dren and he thinks how “Spain would vir­tu­ally fall apart with­out the abuela”. And these el­derly ladies are often the most ruth­less about barg­ing into queues with the magic, de­ceit­ful mantra… “just a tiny lit­tle ques­tion.”

I hope the above para­graph gives some idea of the book. These are Slow Trav­els. Brett’s good on the “lit­tle things”. He starts from the de­tails of a scene, what he sees, to then gen­er­alise to what he thinks. He is pas­sive, drawn along by what trains or buses are avail­able, with no fixed sched­ule. And he is ac­tive: he boldly ac­costs peo­ple, so he ad­dresses the man in the wait­ing-room and ap­proaches Ahmed. His style when he talks to peo­ple is both calm and provoca­tive. When he tack­les a poor shop as­sis­tant in Zaragoza on why she sells in­ef­fec­tive lucky charms, the con­ver­sa­tion leads to his ask­ing her if she be­lieves in God. She red­dens in em­bar­rass­ment. He tells her not to worry and that he is leav­ing.

It is an off-the-beaten-track travel book, not a guide book. There are no rec­om­mended ho­tels, bull-fights, man­til­las, palaces or golden sands. His strengths lie in sketches of con­tem­po­rary Span­ish life and the peo­ple he meets: the “bits of the phys­i­cal world” he ad­mires in Muñoz Molina. In Zaragoza, after a Goya ex­hi­bi­tion, he drinks with Mag­gie who is read­ing Trainspot­ting in an Eng­lish-themed pub. He re­spects her be­cause she is get­ting in­volved in Span­ish life, un­like so many for­eign­ers. At yet an­other rail­way sta­tion he ap­proaches a Sene­galese stu­dent of the Koran. Brett likes him too, for un­in­hib­it­edly and un­usu­ally read­ing in a pub­lic place. Brett’s al­ways wait­ing around at sta­tions as it is Au­gust and trains are full. It is very hot, but Brett from the dry heart of Aus­tralia likes the heat.

Going slow

On the train to Ex­tremadura he reads Goyti­solo and looks at the scenery and other pas­sen­gers. Bor­ing? No, be­cause this is what every­one does on train jour­neys. Often, in his pre­cise de­scrip­tions of these brief en­coun­ters and fleet­ing events, he uses quite long sen­tences, with un­usual struc­tures. With a prepo­si­tion he some­times starts a sen­tence, adding de­pen­dent clauses, so you have to go back and read again to see how the sen­tence works. All this skil­fully forces read­ers to slow down and be less likely to com­mit that too-com­mon sin of read­ing too fast. Or not al­ways so skil­fully: at times the cu­ri­ous syn­tax drifts into loss of mean­ing.

In Mérida he meets again a whole num­ber of peo­ple. He re­ports a con­ver­sa­tion about Cat­alo­nia with a bar­man. In the street he chats to a gypsy fla­menco singer. He talks to a man col­lect­ing junk from rub­bish con­tain­ers to sell. He vis­its an Eng­lish cou­ple, liv­ing cheaply by a lake in the beau­ti­ful coun­try­side. All these are af­fected by the 2008 cri­sis that most peo­ple have not re­cov­ered from. Yet they see them­selves, Brett posits, not as vic­tims, but as en­tre­pre­neurs.

An­dalu­sia to Cat­alo­nia

Brett vis­its Córdoba, Écija, Jaén, Málaga and Úbeda, all in An­dalu­sia. He ends with a final chap­ter on Cat­alo­nia as he ap­proaches home. He is forced to take an AVE for a sec­ond time. Slow trains, where they still exist, are no­to­ri­ously un­der­funded.

This is a short book, long on con­tent. He moves slowly, but the book moves rapidly through scenes and themes. At times, though, these shifts are too brusque. One ex­am­ple: Brett men­tions the “sub­tle, en­gag­ing mem­oir ti­tled An Un­known Woman” by Lucia Graves, but then says noth­ing more about her ex­cept her throw­away com­ment that well-off Spaniards in the Franco years used to order books “by the metre” merely as dec­o­ra­tion (p.140). Lucia Graves is used by the au­thor to make a point, but she and her mem­oir are not in­te­grated into the flow of his book. Such over-brevity is frus­trat­ing for the reader and in­el­e­gant, too.

Brett’s cu­ri­ous style is dis­con­cert­ing at times. Per­haps it should be so. He draws his read­ers through con­tem­po­rary Spain. Not all, he shows, is won­der­ful. But to­ward the end, in oth­er­wise rather dull Jaén, he stum­bles on “squares full of peo­ple eat­ing and talk­ing in the open air… This was Spain at its ab­solute un­af­fected best: men, women and chil­dren of all ages so­cial­iz­ing smoothly to­gether in large groups.” The Mediter­ranean life! De­spite cri­sis, de­spite poverty, de­spite the rise of fas­cism: doesn’t it take your breath away?