You tell me.
Lately I've been spending time with Jim Benning and Rolf Potts. Even though we are knee deep in the web world of travel writing, when we sit down for beers or dim sum it all comes back to print. But not quite in the way you’d think. It’s not some sun-induced market leads swap session. Rather, it’s an engaging and often animated discussion about recent reads, other authors, book proposals, agents, and travel magazines.
Yesterday the guys made the observation that if your story doesn’t have a number in front of it, it’s not getting in. Have travel magazines reduced themselves to series of “Bests”? The Best Beaches…The Best Hotels…The Best New EU Addition You Can Travel To For Under $50 A Day.
Maybe the ADD level is so high that there is no audience with an attention span for longer pieces. So, where are all the good travel essays?
I’m asking you. Not telling you. I’d rather this be a discussion. Tell us the last travel related magazine article you read. What was it, and where was it printed? If you can remember or track it down, give us the author.
I think the “list” trend in travel writing is as much a matter of advertising as audience. With less ad revenues coming into travel magazines since 9/11, magazines have retreated to a more conservative “service” approach. Which I think is a mistake, since service articles just don’t affect readers in the same way as a good vicarious literary travel feature. But I could be prejudiced, since that’s what I prefer to write.
I agree. I think there’s a place for service articles in magazines. But I like to be inspired to travel, and while service articles provide useful tips, they don’t give me that vicarious feeling of discovery and adventure that really makes me want to hit the road. Only good narrative writing can do that.
Hi Jen,
I am a new member of Bootsnall and recently sent in the form to set up a Bootsnblog page which I called Viva South America (not up as yet). I travelled through SA for about 9 nine months in 1980. As I say in the blurb, 20 years later I was still telling tales and decided to put pen to paper and save the friendships. Anyhow I came up with about 50 pages and have self published (complete with about 40 photos) for friends and family. Just wondering if you would be interested in taking a look and see what you think about any publishing potential. Let me know at my email address and I will send you the first chapter Leaving home, Easter Island and Chile. You should note the text hasn’t been edited by a professional – if you thought it was worth it I could look into having this done.
Cheers, Joannie
ok jen, i’ll bite.
i guess your question depends on how you define travel literature: if you go the service angle, and say it’s just a supply of info on how to get to a place or what to see, then, yeah, travel literature is no more than a long “paris for dummies” book, and writers are really just verbatum reporters with a tiny dose of safe quirkiness to make the readers feel like they’re getting some unique info.
if you say travel literature is a focus on worldwide “sense of place,” then really anything with vivid description could be considered travel writing. as george harrison riffed,
“without going out of my door i can know all things of earth
without looking out of my window, i can know the ways of heaven
the farther one travels, the less one knows
arrive without travelling
see all without looking
do all without doing…”
the 2003 “best american travel writing” compilation from HM featured a story about a city in delaware which hosts a whole bunch of credit card companies. couldn’t be a more pedestrian place, but looking inward, instead on some cliched exotic tibetan peak with bandits or yeti, we can learn more about who we are, why we do what we do, what is the meaning of life, etc.
a couple op-ed essayists for the NYTimes, Nicholas Kristof, and Thomas Friedman (https://www.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/)have had some “travel” essays which could serve as examples of the future of the genre. Each of the authors have an obvious political slant & agenda,which i can take or leave, but they travel worldwide, report on events, places, people, and come to conclusions on what this means to our life, here, now, and make recommendations on next steps. I think that’s the essence of travel writing: combining a sense of place with the whole “who cares” element.
i think the best “travel” essays shouldn’t be in the travel section at all. They should be on the front page of a newspaper, the first story of the evening news. My other recco would be Ryszard kapuscinski, he has some mind blowing essays in what could loosely be categorized as “travel’in his career as a war correspondant (The soccer war, Another day of life, The Emporer). I think maybe the days of the Tim Cahill/Bill Bryson cutsie self-deprecating-no-i’m-really- deep essayist may be numbered, slipping into the realm of cliche. likewise the francis maynes “house in wherever” theme of sincere american going abroad to deal with crazy foreigners. they’ve sold a bunch of books, but it’s the same stuff all over again, has to be a limit on that. what’s next? i dunno, we’ll see who wins the election, what the mood of the country is about foreign lands.
As rolf intimated, travel sections of newspapers and travel magazines are basically just pimps for the travel advertising industry. if you want to be published there, figure out the advertising angle and start from there. if you want to write “travel literature,” forget the “travel” label and just write literature. i think there’s some quote by jan morris about how she hates the travel writer label, she just wants to be considered a Writer who happens to write about foreign places.
hope that entertained y’all.
Hey poopoohead
What a nice bit of writing – in itself. I must say I haven’t actually tried reading ‘travel writing’ as a genre – though of course I’ve heard of Bill Bryson – must have a flick through as well as look up your recommended site.
Happy travelling – where to next? I won’t be travelling for a few years to come but definitely after that I loved it. And my advice to any traveller – you can’t be tooo prepared. Read as much as you can before you go, learn the language, read stories that have been written in and about the places – you can’t know tooo much.
cheers, Joannie
hey Jen, Jim, Rolf and WR community,
I, too, was having a similar discussion with a friend. The list thing can be annoying, but as an editor, I see how easy it is to run them and fall for them. True, there’s an advertising influence, and two, they are easy to make short and fit on VERY limited print pages (which are, of course, driven by ad pages). But three, I think there’s also a very real desire by the public to read what I call “hit-and-run” travel stories. 10 top ideas. Something to seed their interest. I admit to really scanning Outside mag’s recent “list” of European adventure spots. Of course, I also read Mark Jenkins excellent essay, which happened to be about bicycles and Africa and economies and hope.
Both types of essays really have their place — the problem is when the narratives are completely forgotten and unless it’s a top XXX or it makes your abs flatter, it’s not published.
And since you asked for good narratives Jen, I’ll be a complete homer and plug our recent cover story for StudentTraveler (our last two, actually, Rock and Roll Bali and The Last Island in Thailand, by Jeff Simmermon and Matt Goulding respectively). Two pieces of what I consider truly great travel narrative: funny, insightful, and most importantly, solid essays that have a place as a character.
http://www.StudentTraveler.com
(Hope that’s not too shameful but though I’m biased, at least I can admit it!)
Recently read this one, by a fellow South African, in the NYTimes.
https://tinyurl.com/34bst
As Kapuscinski said: “It is not the story that is not getting expressed: it’s what surrounds the story. The climate, the atmosphere of the street, the feeling of the people, the gossip of the town, the smell; the thousand, thousand elements of reality that are part of the event you read about in 600 words in your morning paper.
“You know, sometimes the critical response to my books is amusing. There are so many complaints: Kapuscinski never mentions dates, Kapuscinski never gives us the name of the minister, he has forgotten the order of events. All that, of course, is exactly what I avoid. If those are the questions you want answered, you can visit your local library, where you will find everything you need: the newspapers of the time, the reference books, a dictionary.
https://www.granta.com/extracts/190