Natural Opium: Some Travelers' Tales

by Diane Johnson

Widely acclaimed novelist, essayist, and social critic Diane Johnson presents ten striking stories, each of which is part memoir, part short story, part sharp observation of the world today. This is a book about contemporary travelers in far-flung places, about the inner compulsion to travel, and about the condition of being a traveler.

Great Barrier Reef --
Wine --
The wildebeest --
Cuckoo clock --
The heart of Pakistan --
Rolex --
Power structures --
White hunter --
Fellow travelers --
In the land of the patriarchs

Genres: Travel, Essays, Nonfiction, Memoir

234 pages, Hardcover

Published January 11, 1993

About the author

Diane Johnson is an American novelist and essayist whose satirical novels often feature American heroines living in contemporary France. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Persian Nights in 1988.
In addition to her literary works, she is also known for writing the screenplay of the 1980 film The Shining together with its director and producer Stanley Kubrick.

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Natural Opium: Some Travelers' Tales is a collection of travel essays published thirty years ago that now seem curiously quaint. As I haven't travelled abroad since (reluctantly) getting a smart phone, it hadn't really occurred to me how they've transformed international travel. Before pocket internet access, you would arrive somewhere abroad and just... not not know where anything was unless you had a map or guide, not understand the signage unless you knew the local language or had a phrase book, and need to ask for help with things. Another retro element is Johnson's husband taking the Concorde - remember when that was a thing? If you're under 25, presumably not.

Johnson's thoughtful yet somewhat acidic tone seems coloured by the fact that her travels were not chosen for her. The journeys all over the world that she recounts involved accompanying her husband (a doctor) on work trips to meetings of the International Infectious Disease Council. I wondered whether she was more inclined to criticise something that she didn't choose, but also more open to new experiences because she wasn't paying for them? Her adventures include walking on the Great Barrier Reef, a safari in Tanzania, perilous late-night sledding in Switzerland, and touring ancient tombs in Egypt.

My favourite chapter covered an unexpected stop in the then-Soviet Union on a flight from Paris to Hong Kong. I enjoyed these comments on the psychological impact of international travel:

Poor [husband] in uncomfortable Shenyang, or perhaps he was by now in Hong Kong. Any worries about him seemed far away, that effect of travel by which real life is left behind and a new reality, the here and now, is more important. The new difficulties of the here and now make the old seem flat and simple. I felt an intense pleasure merely in being, here, this minute. The absence of normal context proves that you must exist independent of it, you, a being alive. Here I am, a woman alone in the Soviet Union, and I will go on being me. The world is interesting and the food not bad (as long as you pay in hard currency). Thinking like this, I was filled with the happiest of traveller's emotions, an existential sense of belonging.

I was less keen on some of the preceding chapters, although the insight into how travel has changed was thought-provoking. I prefer armchair travel by book to the real thing, but Natural Opium: Some Travelers' Tales didn't quite hit the spot. Perhaps Johnson's judgements on her fellow-travellers seemed a bit too sharp and her treatment of cultural differences somewhat inevitably old-fashioned.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. I had no idea that Diane Johnson wrote essays in addition to fiction, and I will definitely check to see if she's had any other essays published beyond these gems. As the title indicates, the essays in the book focus on traveling, but not in any real "I traveled here and saw / did this great thing" travel essay or article, such as one would find in a travel magazine. Rather, these are fairly personal - sometimes painfully so, as in I found them delightful, but if I were the subject(s) of various of her tales, I would likely not feel quite so friendly toward the author post-read - and while the stories take place in locations away from home (usually quite far away from home - the woman gets around), she often focuses on the type of personal interactions or reactions, sometimes her own and often those of others, that an enthusiastic observer of human nature could spot anywhere. Ms. Johnson is an Olympic class observer of human nature, so part of the pleasure of this book is observing vicariously, and not always charitably. There's a great psychological element to her observations, and many times they are not always flattering, either about the author herself or of others (or both). All that being said, it's a great book and is worth tracking down.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of stories can be categorized as "auto fiction." They are true stories written with some artistic license.

I read this book while on my first extended stay far from my home country. It gave me comfort to read anything in English since there was so little of it around me. I found it entertaining and it was a great reminder to stay open to the culture and people I was among and not to be an ugly American.

[Kimberlyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

short stories of a woman's experience of travel with her doctor husband. Various trips and various insight.

[Wendy Hollister · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love the stories from Diane's adventures. I continue to love Diane Johnson's writing.

[Kelly Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a pleasure to read such a well written book.

[Riq Hoelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

In this 1993 book published by A.A. Knopf, the author begins by putting down the tourist in order to laud the traveler. In the following 10 chapters set in Australia, India, Tanzania/Kenya, Grindelwald (Switzerland), London, China, Egypt, South Africa, Hong Kong and Utah, she nevertheless proves to be the former. Displaying little curiosity about the people and cultures she visits -- she is usually there as part of a medical junket -- she is all for seeing the famous sites and never fails to mention the cheap trinkets she collects as souvenirs, never failing to deried the tasteless and praise the quality, as if any could ever be the latter. She actually dares to write "since we were in India it would be a shame to miss the Taj Mahal". Rather than people and cultures, the book is about the author herself, without ever giving the reader any compelling reason to be interested. Even on this topic she doesn't present much information to the extent of referring to her husband as "J." or "Dr. M", a dodge rendered all the more curious by the fact that his full name, Dr. John Murray, is given on the book jacket. We are still left wondering about the answers to the jacket's questions "why do we travel, how does it change us"? Given all this, I am curious who created the chapter titles because they are uncommonly good. "The Heart of Pakistan" is nicely-turned, while "Wildebeest" is a wonderfully-ambiguous title which can refer both to the migrating creatures as well as a foolish young lady who puts herself in the path of a lion. But this book has no plan or artistic unity. Rather we seem to get a jumble sale, perhaps the odds and ends that the author has not been able to work into other creations. And sometimes the story is not even Johnson's, but someone else's and she is the mere reporter, and sometimes, as in the case of the polygamists, reported a lot more elsewhere. The book jacket proclaims "a new kind of travel book" -- I would suggest that there's a reason a book like this has not been done before, and in this age of far too many narcissistic books, let's also hope not again.

[Russell · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the first story in Natural Opium, about a boat trip to see the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, Diane Johnson writes about the other passengers that "reluctantly I learned their names, in order to detest them with precision." If that line doesn't grab your attention, the rest of the tales in this slim volume will. Johnson apparently travels a great deal, mostly in connection with her doctor husband's globe-spanning medical consulting on infectious diseases, and always seems to find things that are wrong in a humorous way. Though not quite reaching the level of "fish out of water" travel writing (perhaps best done by the late Eric Newby), her voice is lively, frequently funny, and always worth the time.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written but depressing