![]() ![]() ![]() But as I continued reading, I felt that some of the racist diatribes were offensive. At first I gave him the benefit of the doubt for living in a different time when people were not politically correct and when there was no concept of cultural relativity. Unfortunately, some of the humor degenerates into appallingly racist and xenophobic comments. Practically every page is full of bantering remarks and railleries. I have only picked a handful of examples from the book of his scintillating wit. Of all the unchristian beverages that ever passed my lips, Turkish coffee is the worst. Then he brought the world-renowned Turkish coffee that poets have sung so rapturously for many generations, and I seized upon it as the last hope that was left of my old dreams of Eastern luxury. The skinny servitor brought a narghili, and I got him to take it out again without wasting any time about it. It was more suggestive of the county hospital than any thing else. They did not come.The blank, unornamented coop had nothing about it of that oriental voluptuousness one reads of so much. I mounted it, and vaguely expected the odors of Araby again. “He took me back and flooded me with hot water, then turbaned my head, swathed me with dry table-cloths, and conducted me to a latticed chicken-coop in one of the galleries, and pointed to one of those Arkansas beds. He had imagined the voluptuousness of the perfumes of Araby, the richness of the silks and carpets and the sensuousness of a luxuriating bath but instead he was in a dark, dingy and slippery corner from where he was taken to a place that resembled a chicken coop and served a Turkish drink which turned out to be the most execrable coffee: Turkey was a country that had conjured up visions of the Arabian Nights for him. I fell over the floor laughing when I read his description of the famed Turkish bath. Sometimes it seems to me, somehow, that there must be a difference between Parisian French and Quaker City French.” One of our passengers said to a shopkeeper, in reference to a proposed return to buy a pair of gloves, “Allong restay trankeel-may be ve coom Moonday ” and would you believe it, that shopkeeper, a born Frenchman, had to ask what it was that had been said. “In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language. ![]() The group’s language troubles with the French provides a good example of a humorous quip: I would say Mark Twain is right up there with Oscar Wilde as one of the wittiest writers I have ever read! Whether the group is traversing through the countryside of the Middle East on recalcitrant donkeys or horses, looking in desperation for soap anywhere in Europe, having a disappointing shaving experience in France, being dragged up the Pyramids by ‘draggers’ asking for ‘baksheesh’, sneaking into the Parthenon at night and stealing grapes along the way, having a private rendezvous with the Czar of Russia or playing pranks on the tourist guides by acting dumb, every experience is recounted with caustic humor. I laughed out aloud innumerable times while reading and at times I was practically in stitches. Mark Twain’s incomparable humor sets this book apart from the countless run of the mill travel guides. ![]() It was a perfect pick for the pandemic as it let me indulge in some armchair travel! It made me reminisce nostalgically about the places I have already visited and compare notes with his experiences and also made me dream of places I have yet to visit. The Innocents Abroad was published two years later, in 1869. At the time he was a travel correspondent for the San Francisco newspaper, “The Alta California” and sent dispatches about his travels to them and to “The New York Tribune” and “The New York Herald” too. In 1867, he embarked on a pleasure excursion with a group of fellow Americans from New York aboard Quaker City, a retired Civil War ship, for a five and a half month long trip around the Mediterranean. Not many people know that he was a prolific travel writer well before he published his two famous novels. When you hear the name Mark Twain, you immediately think of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I recently read The Innocents Abroad, a travelogue of a journey by ship to Europe and the Holy Land, undertaken by Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pseudonym Mark Twain. Click on the link below to access a hypertext map that traces the route of The Quaker City excursion: ![]()
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