By David Balan
“To Timbuktu,” a book written by Casey Scieszka and illustrated by Steven Weinberg, is about the travels of a modest young woman majoring in sociology and a jocular young man majoring in government. Or at least, that is the surface. Upon first exposure to the book, the cover greets the reader with a few humorously blunt captions, reading “Words – Casey Scieszka,” and “Art – Steven Weinberg.” Despite the cute nature of these surface qualities, “To Timbuktu” is much more beyond its bright orange façade.
The book is unassuming and “low-brow,” from Scieszka’s down-to-earth writing to Weinberg’s drawings, which look like they were made with either a crayon or even raw pigment. The heavily abstracted people and environments seem a little jarring at first—but the two creators have a very subtle tandem set up.
The illustrations, despite their relative sparseness and distance from reality, are highly evocative of a sense of place. Not the same place you might see in any given photograph of Morocco or Beijing, but a sense of “experienced” place—a place with meaning and spirit. This frees Scieszka’s words from any obligation to excessive description, and she ruthlessly trims such literary fat from her writing.
Still, upon first diving into the book, the writing seems a little haphazard. Scieszka almost skips and jumps around on a number of different topics. But it is soon apparent that there are three main threads: the relationship between Weinberg and Scieszka, the working life of the two and a healthy dose of humorous anecdotes, ranging from short clips of life in Mali or Laos to travel guidebook parodies.
These three formats switch off nearly every two pages, creating an erratic quality of progression. This does not make the book particularly gripping, but all three formats are cleanly unified through a conversational writing style, which Scieszka pulls off with deceptive ease.
Though “Timbuktu” is no page-turner, the deceptively random construction soon belies a well-planned pacing which seems almost serendipitous. When Scieszka and Weinberg start their journey, they begin by planning with three goals in mind, “1—Get out of the country. 2—Pursue our creative interests (visual art for him, writing for me). 3—Be together.”
This is very self-oriented, which is normal and healthy for a man and a woman fresh out of college. But over the course of having multiple teaching jobs, learning local languages and customs and pursuing personal goals of research, Scieszka and Weinberg grow not only in their worldly knowledge, but also in their awareness. By the time the two of them wrap up their travels in Mali they are considering what they could do for an entire country … a rather large leap, and one that you could almost miss between all the tea drinking, lesson planning and friend making.
Ultimately, “Timbuktu’s” content, form and pacing all sublimate themselves to the real driving force behind the book—people. After all, this is a memoir. The book is richly authentic like very few autobiographical works are—the haphazard construction mirrors the indelible madness of everyday life, but the overall structure shows that it is not without its purpose. “Timbuktu” is detailed in the right places, spiritual in nearly every page and intensely personal.
By the end of it, I felt like I knew Scieszka and Weinberg. Now, I certainly don’t know Scieszka and Weinberg personally, but I knew what was important to them—what they love and who they are when the pressure’s on. I know this same thing when I witness a Rembrandt portrait, Monet’s water lilies, or one of Kandinsky’s symphonies of color. And that communication, despite some sporadic editing, means great success.
[Contact fname=”David” lname=”Balan” email=”dbalan20@student.scad.edu”]
