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Travels with Myself and Another
A travel book organised entirely around the trips that went wrong, and the funniest thing she ever wrote.
- 1978
About Martha Gellhorn
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeGellhorn's account of her worst journeys — China in 1941, the Caribbean, Africa, Russia — told with the flat comic timing of someone who has been genuinely miserable and taken notes. The 'Another' of the title is Hemingway, who appears throughout as her Unwilling Companion and is never named. Written in 1978, more than thirty years after the marriage ended, it is the closest she came to writing about him at length, and she does it without once conceding the subject.
The story, in more detail
Five journeys, chosen for being awful. She goes into the Chinese interior during the Sino-Japanese war by sampan and on horseback; she spends a week in Moscow among dissidents; she sits out long days in a disused water tank at Eilat on the Red Sea among the hippies who had settled there; and there are the African and Caribbean legs. The complaints are specific and repeated — the beds, the absence of anything that could be called a bathroom, food and water she could not risk, and local people who were unable to help her or saw no reason to.
The comedy comes from the flatness of the telling. She does not build the misery into anecdote or draw a lesson from it, and the effect of a professional describing genuine wretchedness without self-pity is funnier than a joke would be. The China section is also the one place she wrote at length about the marriage: Hemingway travels with her as U.C., the Unwilling Companion, named nowhere in the book. He complains, she keeps going, and the reader is left to work out how much of the account is a settled score.
Why we recommend it
The best joke in her work
Calling Hemingway the Unwilling Companion and declining to name him for an entire book is a sustained piece of comic restraint.
Travel writing without the brochure
Organised around journeys that failed, which turns out to be a far better structure than journeys that succeeded.
Late Gellhorn at her loosest
Written at seventy, with nothing left to prove and no editor's war to file for.
What this book explores
Timeline
1941
Gellhorn travels into wartime China by sampan and on horseback with Hemingway — the 'Unwilling Companion,' named nowhere in the book — the journey that sits at the center of the memoir.
1978
More than thirty years after the marriage ended, she publishes the account of her worst journeys, the closest she came to writing about Hemingway at length.
Book editions
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- 1978
Paperback
- Paperback
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Travels with Myself and Another: frequently asked questions
Who wrote Travels with Myself and Another?
Martha Gellhorn. This travel memoir was published in 1978.
What is Travels with Myself and Another about?
Her worst journeys — China in 1941, the Caribbean, Africa, Russia — chosen for being awful, and told with the flat comic timing of someone who has been genuinely miserable and taken notes.
Who is the "Another" of the title?
Ernest Hemingway, her husband at the time, who appears throughout as her "Unwilling Companion" and is never named.
Is it a funny book?
Yes — it is her comic masterpiece, travel writing built entirely from disasters, delivered deadpan.
Was Gellhorn married to Hemingway?
Yes. She was his third wife, and their grueling 1941 trip into wartime China sits at the center of the book.