The Guardian Employs A Titan

Meet Max Gogarty, the latest addition to the Guardian’s company of travel bloggers. Don’t let his appearance fool you. Beneath those £400 sunglasses, that meticulously tossed coiffureage and the carefully cultivated stubble perforating his lilly-white androgyne throat throbs the lion’s pulse of an adventurer. The most obvious allusion is to a swarthy Richard Burton, carving away his foreskin with a dirty flint in a cave just outside of Mecca before bravely entering the holy city where white men feared to tread. But more so! This is the face and soul of the adventurer, the hero, the titan.

But like most titans, Max has already found himself the target of a swarm of small, envious Lilliputians. After a few short hours of his introductory post going live, Max has received over 500 outraged comments from the Guardian’s readers: a cacophonous roar of shrill, petty voices from which only the words “twat”, “git” and “wanker” can clearly be discerned. His lithe, twink-like muscles are restrained by the flossy ropes of jealousy. It irritates the gossamer lanugo of his alabaster skin. This incessant biting, of the lesser, lice-like humanoids, sucks the radiance from this Herculean man-of-action.

But what’s the rumpus? Who is this homoerotic love child of Achilles and Adonis? Who is this avatar of colonialist adventure, hearkening back to an age of heroes? Who is Max Gogarty?

Like all great men, there are many sides to Max Gogarty: he is as undefinable and tempestuous as the stark elements from which his soul was forged. The editor of the Guardian’s Travel section defines Max this way:

Meet Max Gogarty – 19, from north London, spends his money on food, booze and skinny jeans, writes for Skins in his spare time. He’s off to India and Thailand to have a good time, and you can join him in his weekly blog.

It’s the terse, matter-of-fact summary of the disillusioned print journalist who eschews hyperbole, knowing full well that the actions of great men will always speak louder than the cheap-print he has defecated onto the front page over the course of an entire career, describing the lesser accomplishments of politicians, artists, celebrities… posers and fools, the lot of them. But don’t think the words aren’t carefully chosen: there is a canniness to the paragraph, as if the editor worried that his readers might not be able to identify with the life of the only god-like paragon Britain has produced since Byron. Max is just like us, the editor assures. Max also enjoys the low-brow delights of the age in which he was born: he spends his money on food, booze and skinny jeans like the rest of the bovine North London rabble. His flesh is British: only his soul is brighter than the sun.

But it’s not important what Max’s editor thinks of him: what scholars of the future will study is what Max thought of himself. After all, Jesus defined himself as the way, the truth and the life; Ozymandias the king of kings; Socrates the town gadfly; Joseph Smith as Enoch, taken away by God because he was too good a man. How does Max view himself?

Hello. I’m Max Gogarty. I’m 19 and live on top of a hill in north London. At the minute, I’m working in a restaurant with a bunch of lovely, funny people; writing a play; writing bits for Skins; spending any sort of money I earn on food and skinny jeans, and drinking my way to a financially blighted two-month trip to India and Thailand. Clichéd I know, but clichés are there for a reason.

Yes, clichés are there for a reason, and Max knows it. Clichés are the droning sounds that insects make as they bleed away their lives in mindless servitude to the hive mind of Conformity. In other words, clichés are the language of the common man, and though to Max, the argot of the common man is as alien a tongue as the strange, gibbering dialect of the aboriginal Walmajarri, he will use our language to communicate with us… and employ it with the easy precision of a born polyglot. Burton comes to mind again.

But even while speaking the clichéd dialect of the average Briton, Max manages to be profound.

I’m kinda shitting myself about travelling. Well not so much the travelling part. It’s India that scares me. The heat, the roads, the snakes, Australian travellers. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited. But shitting myself.

The point is clear: even heroes know fear and insecurity. It’s getting beyond that fear that defines the man of action. Also, notice the subtle allusion to “shitting himself,” reiterated twice over. Another subtle psychological trick employed by a modern Dickens to connect himself to the plebs: though Max may be god-like, he still sits on the toilet and excretes after the fashion of lesser mortals like you and I.

So what adventures will Max be having while abroad in those dark and mysterious climes, so pungent with the exotic scent of mysticism and incense?

I’m doing India on my own. I’ve options to meet up with people there, but for the most part, it’ll be me and my backpack. I fly into Mumbai today, but will move down to Goa pretty sharpish and chill there for a few days – a nice, slow introduction hopefully laced with lots of swimming, sunbathing and partying. And then South India’s pretty much my oyster – Kerala, Madurai, Bangalore, Cochin, Mysore … Wherever. I’m free to roam. That’s the beauty of doing it by myself.

Practically all of my friends are dotted around the globe scouring every nook and cranny for a bit of culture and enlightenment (but secretly hoping to run into as many full-moon parties as possible). But it seems all gappers I know – wherever they are – will be going to Thailand in March or April, and every one I’ve spoken to is making no secret of the fact that Thailand should be pretty damn decadent.

Just brilliant. Max would make quite the politician. Note that Max does not describe his plans to liberate Sankara stones from the ghoulish clutches of Kali-worshipping Thuggees, though doubtless he has them. Nor does Max describe his ambitions to hack his way through the Thai rainforests, to climb to the very peak of the majestic Doi Inthanon in pursuit of the Buddha’s lost ivory locus. These are adventures he will have, and more besides, but he doesn’t want to seem like a braggart. Again, Max effortlessly connects with the experiences of the common man, focusing his narrative on foreign vacations keenly familiar to the average young British male: bird-dogging drunken Australian floozies on Pattani beaches and the like.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Max missed his mark. Within hours of his first post hitting the Guardian’s Travel Blog (and helped along by promotion on the Guardian’s front page), Max’s introduction had garnered hundreds of responses from outraged readers. Comments like:

I like the Guardian usually, but sometimes, they don’t half get it wrong. Moneyed youngster goes travelling to the usual places to get drunk and meet girls? Well, bugger me, a stroke of genius

And…

[Max] represents a demographic that quite frankly isn’t heard from enough, and if we aren’t careful could be completely ignored by today’s society. How is a nineteen year old, white, public school boy with a penchant for stubble going to get a head in life unless he has a weblog about his already-paid-for round-the-world trip? Free entry in the Azteca Latin Lounge isn’t going to last forever.

And…

All teenagers are excited about exploring themselves. I just don’t want to subsidise their frantic, self-involved rummaging every time I buy a paper.

And…

Skinny jeans, ‘skins’, travelling. The embodiment of everything modern rich kid teenagers stand for in England that make me, at a mere 24 years old, feel like Tony Benn’s grandad

And…

Dear Max,

If you do get “washing machine” tummy, be sure to let the resulting excreta write that weeks blog as its journey around your inner workings couldn’t possible be more stilted and banal than your journey into frontiers unknown.

And…

how marvellous i think im going to barf with excitement.

Perhaps what alienated the plebs was the British love of fair play. Within an hour of his post going live, it quickly got out that Max Gogarty was the son of Paul Gogarty, a Guardian travel writer. In fact, as it turned out, this wasn’t even Max’s first trip to Thailand on the Guardian’s payroll.

To the charges of nepotism, I say, “So what? Even Chronus sired Zeus.” But other charges quickly followed: that Max’s claims to co-writing the Channel 4 television drama Skins in fact only amounted to a single 10 minute MySpace webisode, focusing on “17th century communists, the History Channel and summer holiday boredom.” But far more damaging was the revelation that Max had edited his comprehensive secondary school’s Wikipedia entry to make note of himself, under alumni, as a “Top Guardian Travel Columnist.”

Here, I think the charges against Max are overblown: gifted as he is with talents almost preternatural in scope, is it so hard to believe that Max is precognitive as well? He may not co-write Skins or be a Top Guardian Travel Columnist yet, but it’s inevitable. Max is only guilty here of jumping the gun… a youthful folly to be sure, but not a crime.

Unfortunately, the accusations had their effect on Max’s sensitive soul. As his father Paul Gogarty wrote to the Guardian’s readers the next day:

As Andy Pietrasik’s blog hasn’t mentioned the fact Max won’t be writing any more blogs, I thought I’d bring all those heroic internet warriors the good news. Max’s trip (which he paid for himself I’m afraid – sorry) has got off to the worst possible start and he’s feeling pretty grim so that’s double good news for the brave warriors. You may like or dislike the blog but the cruelty is shocking if quintessentially British. Obviously everyone in his family is very hurt for Max so that’s a bonus. I won’t be reading any more smug clever dick comments but feel free to kick me around the field a bit now – just please leave Max alone. He hasn’t actually done anything wrong and you have your wish – he won’t be writing any further blogs.

I have nothing to say. Humanity has drowned a god in its own shit and bile. Oh, what could have been…

Max, 19, hits the road [Guardian Travel Blog]