There is a term for the travel rage of citizens wedged between corona crisis and Ukraine war, between energy crisis and recession, against the background of a global climate disaster: ‘revenge travel’. Holidays in exotic destinations, despite endless queues at airports, and with a determination to break money, because ‘now it’s possible’ and ‘now it’s still possible’. Time Magazine quoted a holidaymaker like: “We celebrate every moment that we can.”
For traveling there are books about that state between crisis and excess. “Seasons had become postmodern,” writes Sheila Heti in her novel Pure Color. God, says the narrator in pure color, made a first sketch of heaven and earth, stepped back from the canvas and saw too many flaws. The first version, our version, heats up and sets to make way for a better design. “The ice cubes melted. The species died out. The last fossil fuels were burned.”
The narrator is at least as dissatisfied as God, at times disgusted by how the first sketch has turned out: “And apparently all the water had plastic, even the safe water that comes in plastic bottles.” “There are too many PFAS in water and soil all over the world,” wrote NRC this week.
In addition to the seasons, the narrator in Heti has a nostalgic longing for a simpler time, without tutorials: “They didn’t even read the newspaper. They never saw a video of another girl doing her hair. They didn’t even know other girls did their hair.”
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of August 27, 2022