Around the World on Minimum Wage

by Andrew Struthers

About Around the World on Minimum Wage

An exciting travel adventure, as the author explores darkest Scotland, equatorial Africa, remote Tibet, rainsoaked Tofino, and inner Struthers.�

�Victoria film maker and writer Andrew Struthers borrows the language and visual layout of the Victorian travelogue to tell his own tale in Around the World on Minimum Wage. While the stories Struthers regales the reader with are hilarious, there is a larger purpose at work, as the author explores the tensions between Eastern and Western philosophy, and how these differences work themselves out in the person of a Scottish–born, Uganda/Prince George–raised, now established in Victoria artist.�

�Come along with our intrepid adventurer, as he explores a subterranean bookshop in Glasgow, the scorched hills of Africa, sketches the Tibetan uprising, teaches English in Japan, flips burgers and produces plays in Tofino, all the while trying to reconcile seemingly irreconcileable contradictions.

About Andrew Struthers

Andrew Struthers is the author of The Last Voyage of the Loch Ryan (2004) and The Green Shadow (1995), which won a National Magazine Award in its original serialized form. He is at least as well known as his films, including the Hinterland Tales series for MTV, Tiger Bomb: A Symphony in Dynamite, and the wildly popular Spiders on Drugs. His YouTube site is Apeman888.

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304 pages, Paperback

First published November 14, 2014

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic, and now I understand Schrödinger's cat, amæ, the multiverse, all which come up surprisingly often for a travelogue! It's entertaining and smart, and has tiny little chapters so you feel like you're accomplishing something!

[Dennis Bolen · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his latest book Andrew Struthers ranges about the globe from a modest base, working in fish and chip shop, pub or retail store as opportunities afford, with a pro-cannabis, anti-discipline spirit in the tradition of might be considered a Canadian version of Hunter S Thompson. Describing conditions at one of the low-paying jobs referred to in the title he compresses much detail into little space: 'All summer I had dined willfully on bacon strips from the prep table washed down with copious quaffs of root beer from the spigot behind the bar, tipping my glass so that the soda ran down the outside, resulting in a syrupy concentrate that lent me the wild vigour of an autistic child.'

Along the way we're similarly doused with a wild mixology of rag-tag history-in-art information, social theory, tales of love. There is even an occasional infusion of science: from the mechanics of the eye (cones and rods) to a deft, arguably accurate rundown of Da Vinci's smile method: 'When Mona Lisa's eyes are observed from just the right remove, light from the corners of her mouth falls not on the observer's (cones), but on the surrounding rods. Detail is lost; the shadows below her cheeks merge to give the impression of a smile. When the observers eyes flick to her mouth to check this smile, presto! It's gone.' Though Mona resides in the Louvre, and the above passage is a mental spin-off from viewing an image hanging in London's National Gallery, we nonetheless enjoy the author's expansive erudition.

Mr Struthers is the author several books, among them The Green Shadow, an immensely entertaining and penetratingly informative diary of the Clayoquot Sound protests, trying to prevent the cutting down of old growth forest near his present day home in Tofino. His analyses of the personalities, peccadilloes, prejudices and predilections of the various protesting personages during that long summer long ago might well remain one of the best assessments of what is and who are the Green movement.

With Around the World on Minimum Wage, written in a tone reminiscent of JP Donleavy's scattered but cleverly arranged observations of time, character and event, Struthers breaks new literary pathways into the genre of travel memoir. Almost crazily clever, the writing threatens at numerous times to drown itself in it's own precious inventiveness. As his wife mid-drink propels fluid down her nose at the humour of one of his illustrations, the author declares: 'It was the subtle interplay between the image and text that gave the thing its juice-shooting power.'

Everything about this book is pleasantly arguable. Its short chapters of near exactly similar length—suggestive of one complete day's self-imposed writing output—are sometimes a tad superficial. Then again, they occasionally facilitate clearer focus for one or other of the resplendent points of Struthers' elegantly worried-upon cultural minutia. The upshot; though occasionally uneven, a more entertaining book about vagabonding and sheer love of the world may not be extant.

Putting aside the eerily prescient mention of the frequency of earthquakes in the region, the true heart of Around the World on Minimum Wage might well be in its substantial Tibetan passages. Struthers gives an odd-ball primer on what might not be generally known or understood about the whole Mao vs Dalai Lama mid-20th Century dustup. In parallel narratives we view both a personal journey of discovery and an alternate national history. The section illustrates the importance of seeing the world though one's own eyes, experiencing the realities of the people on the ground, finding perspective on the greater world by closely examining a section of the unfamiliar.

Laced with all manner of interesting travel-borne summation (who knew that Dounreay in the north of Scotland was the site of Europe's first fast breeder nuclear reactor station?), and despite the unnecessarily obscure posing of some of this book (who cares what a 'gimbler' is?), the overall force of the observations, the studied analyses of persons, places and things, and the brilliant madness of the narrator make this book at true trip of the body, mind and soul.

[Alix · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ngl, it was a struggle. It's done in the style of a Victorian Travelogue and is about Andrew's travels in the 1970/80s though mostly Asia (Japan, China, Tibet, Nepal, India)... a lot of language one wouldn't use today, various forms of Orientalism (some on purpose, some perhaps not), and in my opinion, ended up being largely an account of the stupid shit that straight white men can get away with, especially back in the 1970/80s.

I wouldn't suggest the book to anyone who doesn't already know a good deal of history, because he flits around topics without really landing on explaining details to any one of them - so it's very easy to get lost as to what the heck he's talking about.

[Patrik Sampler · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. I really enjoyed this. As another reviewer remarked, it's constructed of short, readable chapters, readable not just because they're short but because they're cleverly written. The depth of insight in this book is remarkable, it's funny in a lot of places, and overall belongs in the category "books that should be more widely known and read." The illustrations and typesetting are beautiful.

[Greg]

Not the right time to read this one — the writing just came off as a little too clever and a little too smug.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book. Totally funny and eccentric. Probably not what you are expecting. Enjoy!