McSweeney's contributor Jason Roberts focuses his first book, A Sense of the World, on James Holman, who overcame his blindness to become the most famed adventurer of the 19th century.
You've published mostly short criticism and fiction. What drew you to such a different project?
Two things: it was essentially a quest, which almost became a personal mission. I didn't have to do too much research to become aware that we should be naming junior high schools after this man—he should be part of our emotional landscape, like Johnny Appleseed and Helen Keller. Also, I was making a commitment to writing narrative nonfiction and was looking for something that could sustain a longer project.
How did you go about researching James Holman and how long did it take? Was it difficult?
Three years. I had optimistically put down 10 months in my proposal. My agent, voice of reason, said 18 months, and I scoffed. Then one begins to understand the need to do full justice to the individual. I had two mysteries to unlock: to find [both] the cause of Holman's blindness and the ultimate fate of Holman's writings. I tried to find both of those and could never get a conclusive answer. It was my own journey into the unknown.
One of the most interesting aspects of the book is its description of travel during the early 19th century, specifically its arduousness. Was this something that particularly struck you?
Very much so. It destroyed the notion of destination. It made me understand that we have worked to make travel into a form of sleep. Travel for us has become iconified as a comfortable moment of relaxation or sleep between destinations. Because it was so much more of a struggle to get somewhere, Holman was more alive to the process. He was collecting sensory information, which was just as important on the road to Rio de Janeiro as being in Rio itself.
You've lived in a number of places, especially when younger, and had several different careers. Did Holman's intrinsic restlessness strike a personal chord?
It resonated very much. Looking back over the haphazard nature of life, it is empowering to view it as a grand adventure. This was how my parents rationalized our pinball life, wasn't it a great adventure? Holman really was a person who experienced the world more completely than anybody before or since. He spent 50 years simply going out into the world and experiencing it for no other reason than to understand place.
