Page - 51 - in >mcs_lab> - Mobile Culture Studies, Volume 2/2020

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 6 2o20 (Travel) Rhian Waller | Postcolonial Pictures 51 buildings” (2008: 280). Trains and western-style architecture are clearly recognized within the text as hallmarks of colonialism, and the cover therefore fits the text. At the same time, travel writing — in common with travel and tourism advertising — tra- des on the ideal of unspoilt nature, utilising images that signify a “paradise on earth” (Kravanja, 2012) and “Edenic narratives” (Kneas, 2016) that minimise the impact of tourism on those landscapes. This is “paradise contrived” (Dann, 1996), an image of natural, idealised, uninhabi- ted space. Of course, paradise contrived is anything but natural; it is constructed from carefully sculpted signifiers that fetishize the natural world while obscuring the distortions of tourism, industry and the “brute force technology” (Josephson, 2002) the traveller is likely to encounter on their way to ‘paradise’. Frye argues the travel book functions as a picaresque or elegiac/pastoral “quest romance” (1973, 209). Both of these modes are signified by the cover image and titles of Theroux’s books. While linked with the industrial and post-pioneering aspects of colonialism, the repeated use of train imagery may also evoke nostalgia, argues Papalas (2015), having been superseded by other modes of travel. It would be a stretch to suggest that these images symbolise or are calculated to communicate nostalgia for colonialism itself, but there is a throwback element to both the mode of travel and the way the journey is linguistically mediated. Hints of risk, danger and darkness are evident in key textual signifiers: “snakes”, “ghost”, “dark star”, which hint at both classic adventure narratives, with their exoticisation and elements of the fantastic. Repeated use of the word “safari”, originally a word for ‘travel’ in Arabic-influenced Swahili etymology, has come, in the west, to signify exploration, observation and discovery, but also entertainment, a packaging of close but controlled encounters with nature. This highlights a paradox: these locations and journeys are portrayed as wild, possessing animalistic or supernatural properties, but they are safely contained for the benefit of the reader. The title of Last Train to Zona Verde (2014) has elegiac overtones; ‘the last [noun]’ is a title trope that frequently occurs in narratives that valorise the past. By utilising these textual signifiers and by pictorially displaying a simplified vision of Mexico-as-wilderness, the East-as- wilderness and Africa-as-wilderness, the covers act both as calls to adventure and as invitations to “[seek] out the vestiges of a vanishing way of life, or a culture perceived as less complex and less stressful than the traveller’s own” (Thompson, 2001, 17). The latter, in reality, is a selective over-simplification of the host culture; rural and urban life is neither simple nor easy, and nor are the experiences of residents, indigenous people and immigrants. Analysis: Human Absence and Activity Those books that do depict human subjects also fall into subtle patterns that echo the binaries of dominance/subservience and imperial/subaltern. For instance, those that delve into develo- ped and more affluent western settings are more likely to feature holidaymakers than those that focus on developing economies. These fall into the Distant Interpersonal Metafunction (DIM) set, as the subjects’ faces are often obscured, but there is clear signification of human presence, though the connection between human subject and viewer is weak. Half of these covers feature westernised economies: The Pillars of Hercules: A Grand Tour of the Mediterranean (2011) and The Kingdom by the Sea: A Journey Around the Coast of Great Britain (1984). The figures in these images are engaged in leisure activities and are found lounging on beaches. In contrast, the