“Kingdom of Ten Thousand Things,” Gary Geddes
Posted January 5th, 2008 by Antonia Malchik
Gary Geddes’s journey traversing Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, the Northern Pacific Ocean, Guatemala, and Mexico, following in the footsteps of a fifth-century Buddhist monk named Huishen, should have culminated in a story that held readers spellbound. Instead — and it pains me to criticize a travel book — the most interesting thing about this recently published tome is its lyrical title: Kingdom of Ten Thousand Things: An Impossible Journey from Kabul to Chiapas.
The concept is fantastic. Following in the footsteps of Huishen, who in the fifth century escaped religious persecution to possibly visit British Columbia long before Christopher Columbus thought he had finally come across India, is an idea to make any publisher jump. It’s a great idea. And Geddes was clearly enthusiastic about Huishen, whom he claims as a thirty-year personal obsession. The travel should have been just as interesting: the trip took Geddes to refugee camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan just before September 11, 2001, and to evocative sections of the Silk Road recently traveled by Colin Thubron.
But any idea can be undermined by a general sense of malaise, which is what haunts Geddes’s book. I started out rooting for him, and I kept trying to rally my attention, but in the meantime found myself skimming entire sections because neither the language nor the experience were enough to hold my attention. Geddes incorporates many elements of good travel writing — dialogue, encounters with locals and other travelers, a good idea, introspection — but just fails to pull them together.
I was left wondering if his own attitude thwarted Geddes’s attempt at an epic journey. When wondering, once again, “what had prompted me to undertake this journey” aside from his interest in Huishen, he observes that, “I am a seasoned, though seldom enthusiastic, traveler. Being on the road heightens my loneliness and, … prompts unfavorable comparisons with the home place. … My ideal version of travel would be to visit exotic places all week long but be back in my own bed on the weekends.”
The sentiment of weariness and frustration is echoed several times throughout the book, and it lies underneath the entire journey, deadening the narrative. A reader can’t get excited about Geddes’s story because, despite his doggedness in seeing his project through, he doesn’t seem terribly excited about it himself.
Being lonely and tired can be themes in a story, too, but the writer has to be willing to give up the narrative line he or she chose in the first place. Geddes refuses to do so, even as it becomes clear that he is unable to pick up Huishen’s tracks anywhere on this long journey. It takes a talented travel writer to realize during their preparatory research that they will not find exactly what they are looking for, but that they can make a story out of what they find instead. Geddes gives us plenty of observations about what he sees, his encounters, and his own mental state, but he fails in the end to pull them together into a thread that will pull readers along.
A good travel book either makes the reader want to see the places for themselves, or makes them feel that they’ve already been. A bad one makes the reader wish they could write the book themselves. Geddes is clearly an accomplished poet. The details he takes in speak of an observer who’s used to paying attention to the small colors and shapes of life that make poetry vivid. Unfortunately, his talents as a poet didn’t translate to either the language or the structure required to make prose gripping.
