The Death Of A Much Travelled Woman - Plot & Excerpts
It is over a year since I spent the day with you on your lovely island. I remember it all very vividly… —Georgia O’Keefe, letter to her hosts on Maui FOR A LONG TIME I turned up my nose at Hawaii. The very name reeked of junior-high talent shows where pimpled hula dancers tried to keep their cellophane skirts up and their flowery wreaths from falling into their eyes. Luaus with barbecued pigs, tiny paper umbrellas decorating tall, lethally sweet cocktails, muscular tanned youths with surfboards, Waikiki, Gidget, Magnum P.I.—those are the images that came to mind when people said, “You’ve never been to Hawaii? You’ve never been to Hawaii, and you’ve been to Patagonia and the Ivory Coast?” But that’s the point. We who call ourselves travellers are snobs of the worst kind. We would much prefer to be wildly uncomfortable on the cushionless seats of a bus in Bangladesh or a train traversing the Gobi Desert, moving slowly through some strange desolate landscape and either feeling boiling hot or freezing cold, with nothing to eat, no toilet paper, and nothing to read, surrounded by hostile people who don’t speak our language and perhaps want to convert us to their religion or to steal all our money, than to do anything so gauche as to enjoy ourselves in any sort of tropical paradise, particularly if it means that another Westerner, a mere tourist, might be anywhere in sight.
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