A Voyage Long and Strange

Tony Horwitz's A Voyage Long and Strange is a look at the selected voyagers and sojourners who were left out of the spotlight, so much of which has focused on the Columbus and the Pilgrims. While the two do not strictly form chronological bookends for his narrative (The Vikings came before them all), most of the chapters were devoted to the various explorers that came between the two.

Horwitz alternates between recounting actual historical events of these explorers and his own travelogue, as he retraces the steps mile for mile. At first I found this change of pace somewhat off-putting, but after a while I realize that this was done for a purpose- to reconcile the historical figure with the mystical one that exists within our current imagination. The historical De Soto was cruel, ruthless, vindictive- only to be sanitized and made into a cartoon character in our current imagination.

In this sense, this is less of a history book, however packed with copious and assiduously researched anecdotes, as it was a sociological rumination. A theses on the power of myth and mythology and why some are selectively exalted to a Founder status while others die a nameless death. Horwitz the journalist is horrified at the selective airbrushing of our historical icons, at the same time Horwitz the writer I think was impressed and endeared by our collective emotional need to attach meaning to things, to remake historical things in the context of our yearning. For the American psyche, it is about bestowing the foundation mytho upon whom we thought the most deserving: if we can not have history to our liking, then we shall retell history in our image.

And yet the history behind the history is haunting in its own right. Horwitz wistfully noted that the Spaniards were the first and the last people to see these magnificent pre-Colombian civilizations in North America, who were swept away in a tide of disease and war. He could not but express a tinge of envy and sadness. The clash of civilizations was one-sided and bloody- conquistadors bragged about the sheer number of people they were able to kill. The Pilgrims came upon New England in the presence of unspoiled land. And empty villages that once teemed with tribes and life. Nor are Indians portrayed in a idealistic light- they were neither naive or innocent, even if the atrocities tilted pretty much one way as a result of technological differentials. And for all its greed, dishonesty, and cruelty, the conquistadors were also industrious- De Soto's man jury-rigged a functional, somewhat sea-worthy ship from their own armor at the end of his year-long travel. A voyage long and strange, and the wanderlust that is the American DNA.