I had never heard of Wallace Stevens' poem Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction before. Matthew Crompton's Roads Toward a Supreme Fiction is a trip memoir of a bikepacking journey through Tibet and Central Asia that borrows directly from the poem's title. At its core, Stevens' poem is about searching for meaning. It treats truth as something we move toward but never fully reach, and Crompton takes that idea and puts it on the road.
Initially, I was skeptical about writing a book review. Writing a book review is not like writing a tire review. Commenting on a person's growth and reflection is much tougher than analyzing something like rolling resistance. I think that is why I subconsciously decided not to enjoy Matthew's book before I had even started it. I also do not read travel books very often, in fact, almost never. Minus one book by Bill Bryson in my late teens, which happened to be on the shelf at the English school I taught at in Tokyo. But I do read a lot and the funny part is I read almost entirely fantasy and sci-fi, with the occasional book on mathematics and physics. Fantasy and sci-fi are definitely considered by some as the “supreme fiction,” and have one thing in common for me: an escape.
I stared Matthew's book on my shelf next to my bed for weeks, resenting the fact that I had to read it, almost like a high school student forced to read Shakespeare. But ultimately, I recalled enjoying that one Bill Bryson book immensely and how it helped me escape in a way that felt very similar to sci-fi or fantasy. That is what got me started with Roads Toward a Supreme Fiction, an inherent curiosity in where it led. Starting the book was tough for me, but I thank the universe that I actually did.
About the Author
Matthew Crompton is an award-winning writer and photographer. His work appears in Lonely Planet, Sidetracked, Backpacker, Adventure Cycling Magazine, Wild Magazine, and he also penned and photographed our Gravel Guide to Sydney. He has written and captured images of bikes, hikes, and remote landscapes across Asia, Australia, Europe, and beyond. He is known for combining hard travel with a search for spiritual insight, earning him the Solas Award for Best Travel Writing, with commendations in Australian Photographer of the Year.
Reading the Ride
I was instantly invested in Matthew's story from the opener, an account of experiencing a Walmart that only China could produce. I have lived overseas five or six times in my life in Asia, Europe, and the UK, and my work and personal life have brought me to the Middle East and Africa. Yet Matt's book brought me somewhere I had never been before: western China and the “Stans” of Central Asia. Almost as if I had been travelling there myself, I was not sure what to expect. This was a different kind of bikepacking adventure than I was used to. Missing were the tropes of endless coffee stops, bearded lake cool-downs, handkerchief neck warmers, and spotty tattooing. From the start, there was no doubt about the severity of this adventure, jumping from Tibet to the Chinese deserts to the peaks of mountainous Central Asia.
To say I was impressed by Matthew's effort on his trip would be an understatement. So many times throughout the book Matthew summits high altitudes. In fact, the book feels almost like an endless series of switchbacks to mountain passes approaching 5000 metres above sea level, followed by (mostly) swift descents into storybook valleys. A Herculean effort for anyone on a heavy, fully loaded bike. Only once in my life have I approached similar elevations on a trip to Peru, where I immediately got altitude sickness. Another very impressive aspect of Matthew's bikepacking style was his willingness to wild camp. This is something I am yet to unlock as a bikecamper, but Matthew makes it seem so easy to follow a stream up into the hills and spend a night under stars with such little abandon. Especially in China, where a certain political party is interested in understanding your whereabouts the entire time you are within its borders. Having spent enough time in China, I can safely say that wild camping there is… well, pretty wild.
The format of Roads Toward a Supreme Fiction keeps the reader moving fast. The book has a great cadence, with each chapter a maximum of two pages that covers a day or two of the trip. I read 80 percent of the book lying down, waiting for my kids to fall asleep, a situation where short bursts are ideal. This sounds like it could get monotonous over seventy chapters, but it somehow doesn't. Honestly, by the end of the book, I wanted Matthew to keep going, because I know I could have.
Throughout the book, dozens of laugh-out-loud moments honestly caught me by surprise. Matthew is genuinely funny, which is a sign of a smart, solid writer. I found myself howling, usually at situations that could only be considered hilarious in hindsight, but reading the book, I felt I was travelling alongside him. Matthew has a great sense of place, delivering just the right amount of description to put you in a location and not lose you in details.
Initially, there were a few things I had hoped for with the book. Namely, I wanted to hear more about Matthew's bike and setup. As readers, we get some details through anecdotes of Matthew's mechanical failures, but I was also craving a map and a track of the journey. Of course, this want may be the product of every fantasy novel I have ever read, but I often found myself digging out my phone to find the locations that Matthew was passing through. Because the adventure was somewhere I had never been, the backdrop of much of the story was lost on my mind's eye. Google Maps and photos helped me ground the scene, but ultimately took me out of the book. When I asked Matthew about this, he said it was not a “bike book” about gear or mileage, but a collection of deeper, universal travel stories, and that he has always found the focus on mileage, gear, and all the other standard fare in bike books really tedious. After I heard it put this way, I found myself agreeing. The details I was craving are also the things that annoy me about bikepacking memoirs in general. Roads Toward a Supreme Fiction is much more than a story you would find on Bikepacking.com. It is a reflection of how and why we travel, and the bike is only the vehicle for that awareness.
About halfway through the book, Matthew mentions a sense of anxiety and fear for one upcoming leg of his trip. So many times on the eve of a trip, I get little sleep, awake with nerves about what lies ahead. It is something that rarely comes up in adventure stories, but is almost a universal truth for humans embarking into the unknown. Matthew openly presents his vulnerability throughout the book. Countless times, he relates an imperfect human interaction or a mistake made on his part. To me, this is what makes Matthew's book real: relating the grit of hard travel earnestly and not wrapping it up in some life-lesson nonsense to make it feel good. In particular, I am thinking of one anecdote where Matthew ends up in a physical altercation and questions himself years later if he was, in fact, the bad guy in the situation.
But What Does It All Mean?
In correspondence, I asked Matthew who the book was for, and he responded that it was for bikepackers, fans of the hard travel genre, and anyone who might be interested in the intersection of travel and spirituality. I almost feel inadequate commenting on Matthew's introspections and larger lessons from his trip. I am not as spiritual as I would like to be, or worse, as I sometimes claim to be. I grew up in a Roman Catholic family where spirituality was indoctrinated instead of a journey of personal growth. However, I will say that as an open-minded over-thinker, my train of thought occasionally enters spiritual territory. For instance, I have come around to the idea that “god” is nature, and that many religions have worked to divide us from nature, control the masses, and label anything pagan as demonic. I digress.
Over the past few years, cycling itself has also unlocked into a more meditative practice for me. For most of my life, cycling was a way of challenging myself. Could I do that distance, make that climb? But now I ride to sit with my mind, process the day, and honestly contemplate how to be a better person, which is the core of Matthew's point highlighted through hard-ass bikepacking. One topic Matthew brings up that I have thought about a lot is whether spirituality is a practice of the mind or a practice of the body. From how I understand it, Stevens' poem insists the “supreme fiction” must be rooted in imagination. Crompton, instead, discovers it is rooted in the body around page 181. Matthew explains how he travels to find a spiritual awakening, but finds his earthly body and self. Love. This.
Closing the Loop
I started not wanting to read the book, but I am extremely grateful that I did. It opened up a few ideas in my own life that I had not expected. At one point, Matthew says, “I felt unknotted” (pg. 146). That sense of release is something I had not felt in a very long time, and it reminded me that only hard travel and physical exertion can bring that kind of clarity. The conclusion and coming back to reality, which I will purposely not give away, seems to be one of the most crisp accounts of coming home from such a deep trip that I have ever read.
Writing and publishing the book was a way for Matthew to process a life-changing journey. With distance, he now sees the trip not as the defining moment, but as a stage in his growth as a traveller and as a person. At its heart, the book is a meditation on the deeper truths of hard travel: what we seek when we leave home, how discomfort shapes us, and how solitude and motion can be their own path. It is not a book about bikes or gear, but about the universal search for meaning and growth through travel. The takeaway is clear: whatever leap you are considering in life, take it. The journey may not lead where you expect, but it will give you what you need.
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