Roughing It De Luxe

The real joke of tourism, Irvin S. Cobb suggests, is that we bring ourselves wherever we go. Written in 1913, this wry travelogue chronicles a train pilgrimage to the Grand Canyon, but the landscape is almost secondary to the extraordinary parade of humanity sharing the author's Pullman car. There's a distinguished surgeon who speaks authoritatively about geology, a honeymooning couple dissolving into domestic squabbles before they've even arrived, and a corn-doctor whose nervous enthusiasm for the trip borders on existential terror. Cobb watches them all with the amused eye of a newspaper man who knows that the real story was never the destination. What elevates this beyond mere period-piece nostalgia is how little has changed. The absurdities Cobb catalogs, the tourist who sees nothing, the know-it-all who knows nothing, the couple who brings their fights on vacation, remain perfectly recognizable today. His humor is affectionate rather than cruel, but unflinching. The Grand Canyon arrives as both climax and anti-climax: a canvas large enough to expose every petty human behavior, yet somehow insufficient to transform the travelers. For readers who love early American humor, or who have ever sat in a tour bus watching strangers try to photograph the sublime.