| Thomas William loves to travel, both for the unusual characters he meets along the way and the absurd situations in which he always finds himself. In fact, his mantra is: "I travel, therefore I am alive, and moving, and miles away."
From chaperoning the reader around Europe in the ’70s to more recent romps in Florida, the Caribbean, Mexico and Portugal, Thomas notes all that is quirky, idiotic and ridiculous in the world in Never Hitchhike on the Road Less Travelled. He also laments bad service, the rapidity of commercialization and the death of hitchhiking. While many of his stories and much of the advice have a timeless quality and speak to all types of travellers, the book’s target audience is the baby boomers.
Thomas says he decided to write a travel book after realizing that people would be travelling less after 9/11, but would still want to visit other countries, even if it was by way of words. Moreover, he holds Canada’s only national air carrier responsible for making it difficult to travel within our own country. "I can go to Florida for 300 bucks and that includes a rental car, yet it costs $750 to go to Newfoundland," he says, adding that the worst thing that’s happening to Canadians who want to see their own country is Air Canada.
The book is also filled with tongue-in-cheek travel tips, cultural misunderstandings and the inane acts committed by travellers he categorizes under Tourists Too Stupid to Travel. Thomas, who recently visited Calgary on his book tour, says he employs victim humour – nine times out of 10, he’s the victim.
"When we travel, we all do some pretty stupid things," says the 55-year-old author from Wainfleet, Ontario. "They (the travel industry) dumb us down. They tell you where to sit, they tell you what to eat, they tell you when to get up and when to go to the bathroom. I fully expect the stewardess to take me by the hand and take me to the washroom."
Thomas is a nationally syndicated humour and travel columnist and the author of seven books, including The Dog Rules (Damn Near Everything!) and Guys – Not Real Bright and Damn Proud of It. He has also received Gemini Award nominations for his documentary on Toronto Blue Jays prospects and for his movie about the four guys who invented Trivial Pursuit. There’s no question that Thomas tells a good story, replete with appropriately placed quips, and he always remembers the punch line. However, the humour in these travel tales is really corny.
For example, he recounts the story about the two Japanese tourists who attempted to enter Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity in April 2002, which, unbeknownst to them, was the focal point in an armed standoff between the Israeli army and the Palestinian gunmen inside it. Thomas writes: "The sixth-century stone church in Bethlehem is not, repeat, not the Church of the Naivety!" [Canned laughter]
Or, when he compares the cost of his trip to Cuba to the cost for other "visitors." "My trip to Cuba: $886, not including airport departure tax. Total cost to 300 suspected al-Qaeda terrorists for their extended-stay trip to Guantanamo Bay: zero. Plus no exit tax."
Thomas says it’s not easy to be a humour writer these days, and he defends his craft. "For those of us who write good humour, it’s dismissed as silly stuff and not taken seriously. I think it was Woody Allen who said, ‘At the banquet of literature, the humorists have to sit in high chairs.’ It’s a tough, tough thing to do to make people laugh, and yet when we do it well, we don’t really get a lot of respect."
Travel writing is a tricky undertaking. Those who excel at the craft are unobtrusive guides who take you to foreign lands, stimulating your every sense and feeding your growing curiosity and wonder. Unfortunately, author Thomas commits one of the greatest errors of the genre – playing the ever-present narrator whose first-person accounts ultimately become you-had-to-be-there tales.
Nonetheless, the author’s heart is in the right place. While the jokes may not elicit many chuckles, what you can take away from this book is Thomas’s bohemian spirit – no matter what situation confronts him, disastrous or otherwise, he always sees the humour in it. |
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