`I wasn't sure whether I was flying into Miami or not - I'd heard that they were trying to abolish it," is how English geographer and writer Nick Middleton begins his southern US travelogue. The sentence works as a neat encapsulation of Middleton's style - as wryly amusing as it is sardonic. It's a style that has established him as a travel writer of some substance - his previous three outings, Last Disco in Outer Mongolia, the wonderfully titled Kalashnikovs and Zombie Cucumbers and Travels as a Brussels Scout, have all been warmly received and ensured that all those trips to the vaccination clinic haven't been in vain.
"Traveloguery" is always a risky business: apart from being one of the most over-subscribed areas of the publishing world, too often it just amounts to placing A.N. Other Writer in the middle of next to nowhere with only a bunch of traveller's cheques and a few jotters for company. Without going down the "cultural relativism" cul-de-sac, suffice to say that condescension, coupled with a contrived sense of humour are passed off as the dreaded "sideways look" at different countries and culture.
With so many writers assiduously working the genre, it's a remarkable coincidence that they all seem to come up with Identikit-type books. And how lucky they are to travel to places where most everyone is a "delightful" eccentric and most everything is more vivid and more heightened than previously imagined. Surely somewhere there lies the travel book industry's version of Central Casting, where, on cue, indigenous types will say or do something worth reporting - and embellishing.
There are also the myths - and how to enhance or explode them. In this book, Middleton travels to a place where the myths hang around street corners, idly waiting to proposition any travel writer passing by. The southern states come complete with received wisdom about trailer parks, antebellum mansions, voodoo spells and morons dressed up in pointy white hats. From the eloquent rhetoric of Martin Luther King Jr to the hip-swivelling, cheeseburger-popping Elvis Presley, this place must seem like a fun palace-cum-theme park for the average travel writer.
Middleton "saunters" through the 11 states that made up the old Southern Confederacy with an unconscious checklist of legends and folklore packed deep in his rucksack. He's quick to acknowledge the stylised images of the area (and remember, he is a geographer by profession): "People talked about the Old South and the New South, the Upland South and the Lowland South. The area's northern border was the Mason-Dixon Line or the Smith and Wesson Line (a reference to the South's traditionally high homicide rate). There was also the Bible belt, the Sun belt and the Cotton belt, but of all the euphemisms, I thought Deep South was the most evocative: it conjured up images of grand mansions and sprawling plantations, of Spanish moss streamers and syrupy accents. It's William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams, a place where the past is not dead, it isn't even resting. It's alive and well and living in people's minds".
Leaving aside the somewhat over-worked areas of Graceland and "The Big Easy" - New Orleans - Middleton is better when dealing with the subtler pleasures of places like Monroeville (home to Harper Lee, author of the still awesome To Kill A Mockingbird) whose understated ways about its place in literary history he contrasts neatly with the relentless promotion of Savannah, Georgia - where Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil was set.
It's the odd fascinating insight, though, that really keeps you glued. Writing about something as seemingly mundane as the dome on Thomas Jefferson's residence at Monticello, he notes that it was modelled on the temple of Vesta in Rome which leads on to a treatise on how classical mimicry can be found in all the countries of the great European diaspora: "It is not a coincidence that this style of architecture should become popular here. The notion that this vigorous new country was the latter-day embodiment of the virtues and ideals of ancient Greece and Rome was a strong one, sometimes articulated, perhaps more often subliminal."
The American's image of himself as the reincarnated Athenian or Roman, he notes, lies not just in the phenomenon of university campuses plastered with Greek letters (the fraternal organisations) but in the amount of classical forenames still in use (Homer, as in Simpson, Virgil, Cassius and Julius). Proceeding to unfurl a map of the immediate area, he notes that in northern Georgia alone there are cities/towns called Athens, Rome, Sparta, Cornelia, Augusta and Atlanta alongside so many Corinths, Omegas and Junos. Fascinating stuff.
On a quirkier level, he delights in the many offbeat encounters he has with the locals from state to state. In Texas, a wizened old man tries to explain to him about how the pace of life has changed: "I saw a woman in a smart suit shoot through a revolving door clutching her briefcase and dash off down the street. When I first lived here, they'd have got out the hypodermic, sedated that woman, and put her under observation for a few days. Twenty years ago, no one moved that fast . . ."
Although there are longueurs and at times a tad too much information about the flora and fauna, Middleton has written a charming and eccentric account of his travels. It's deep-fried Dixie and very recommended at that.
Brian Boyd is a freelance journalist
