Tag: Literature
Insanity and the Traveling Life
by Jeffrey Tayler | 01.21.09 | 8:33 AM ET
iStockPhoto In an essay adapted from a talk to writing students, Jeffrey Tayler makes the case for a life of mad (but not unhinged) adventures
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Yahoo! BuzzMorning Links: Obama’s Places, Poe’s 200th Birthday and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.20.09 | 8:06 AM ET
- Barack Obama’s places: Six writers on six places the new president lived.
- Another Onion gem: ‘United Flight Crew Hits up Passengers for Gas Money’
- Modern Drunkard’s bars you won’t be going back to anytime soon.
- US Airways Flight 1549: A New York tourist attraction?
- JetBlue has added a few flights between Pittsburgh and Tampa to accommodate Steelers fans flying to the Super Bowl.
- Photos: Behind the scenes of the Tube in London.
- Happy 200th birthday, Edgar Allen Poe. Here’s where to go in five cities that claim his legacy.
- What’s it worth if you’re mauled by a javelina? A Dutch tourist believes $400,000.
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Robert Louis Stevenson: Internet-Bound
by Eva Holland | 01.15.09 | 1:49 PM ET
A new website is in the works for the “Treasure Island” author, in an apparent effort to revive his fading legacy. (As Book Bench blogger Katherine Ryder puts it, “he’s been left out of various editions of the Norton Anthology of English Literature; worse, “Treasure Island” has been adapted by Hollywood so many times, even Kermit the Frog has a version.”) When it comes online in 2010, the site will make Stevenson the latest travel-esque literary heavyweight—after George Orwell and Ernest Hemingway—to find a new home in cyberspace.
While we’re waiting, Ryder recommends reading Stevenson’s An Apology for Idlers. “He’ll remind you of a vision of life that our teachers warned against,” she writes, “that aimless days are just as important as work days, that staring out the window is also learning, that unadulterated bliss is found with your feet up ... He may even convince you to take a vacation, or at least demand more of one.”
Interview with Michael Buckley: Searching for Shangri-La
by Frank Bures | 01.15.09 | 9:09 AM ET
Frank Bures talks to the author of a guide to a place that may or may not exist
Morning Links: A New Way to See the Prado, Cuban Tourism and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.14.09 | 8:00 AM ET
El Tres De Mayo by Goya (via Wikipedia) - An American in Spain writes about studying Euskera, the “clearest sign of Basque identity.”
- Greenpeace buys land in effort to halt a third runway at Heathrow. It’s now the prime minister’s move.
- Here’s an interesting project: Masterpieces from the Prado on Google Earth.
- Jonathan Raban on the best presidential writers. He notes some of the travel bits of Barack Obama’s “Dreams From My Father.”
- Cuba reported huge tourism numbers in 2008. It could grow if Obama implements the policy outlined by Hillary Clinton.
- A steady flow of flights from Europe—and “tightened restrictions in Thailand and elsewhere in Asia”—are fueling sex tourism in Mombasa, Kenya.
- A couple of long-term travelers share ten lessons of the road. No. 2: Smile.
- The BBC offers some tips on landing that best job in the world.
- Lawlessness reigns at San Diego’s skate parks. Given the city’s financial shape, officials decided not to staff them. Skateboarders have flocked to the parks for the “[f]reedom to smoke while they skate, drink beer, bring dogs, ride minibikes amid the skateboards and scrawl graffiti.”
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What We Loved This Week: Barack Obama, George W. Bush and More
by World Hum | 01.09.09 | 5:16 PM ET
Photo by Micah Clark Dinner With Tibor
by Tom Swick | 01.07.09 | 1:37 PM ET
Contemplating and celebrating the world of travel
The Songlines of Key West: Doing the Duval Crawl
by Bill Belleville | 01.07.09 | 10:28 AM ET
Photo by Michelle Thatcher. In a three-part series, Bill Belleville burrows deep into the spirit of the mythic island.
Morning Links: T-Shirt Justice, Route 66’s International Appeal and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.06.09 | 8:35 AM ET
- The TSA and JetBlue settled with Raed Jarrar for $240,000, more than two years after he was forced to remove a T-shirt with the words “We Will Not Be Silent” in both Arabic and English before boarding a flight.
- Have centuries-old diaries of a “British explorer who saved the real-life Robinson Crusoe” been found?
- Route 66: It’s huge in Belgium and Sweden and the Czech Republic and Norway and…
- A Moscow to Atlanta flight ended up in Newfoundland because of an unruly passenger.
- Air India dismissed “overweight” flight attendants.
- New York City’s 86th Street subway station: It’s “the noisiest, if not the most unlikely, museum in the city.”
- A happy third birthday to Perceptive Travel.
- Chris Patten on “the joys of an Asia-Pacific book tour.”
- Authorities interrupted a German pair’s destination wedding. That’s apparently what happens when the couple consists of a 5-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl who try to take off for Africa while their parents are sleeping.
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R.I.P. 2008: From Philip Agee to Papa Wendo
by Jim Benning | 12.31.08 | 10:09 AM ET
We said goodbye to great writers, adventurers, musicians and others in 2008—all people who, as we see it, had an impact on the world of travel.
R.I.P.:
- Philip Agee, CIA agent and Cuba travel activist
- Bud Browne, surf filmmaker
- Cachao, musician
- George Carlin, comedian
- Michael Crichton, writer
- Elmer Dills, writer and critic
- Steve Fossett, adventurer
- Dave Freeman, writer
- Sir Edmund Hillary, climber and philanthropist
- Tony Hillerman, writer
- Samuel Huntington, writer and political scientist
- Miles Kington, linguist
- Don LaFontiane, voice-over artist
- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, guru
- Richard Marks, activist
- Paul Newman, actor
- Herb Peterson, inventor
- Sydney Pollack, filmmaker
- Dith Pran, photographer
- Diana Barnato Walker, aviator
- David Foster Wallace, writer
- Papa Wendo, musician
R.I.P. Cafe Royal
by Eva Holland | 12.22.08 | 4:19 PM ET
The iconic London cafe closed this weekend after 143 years. Oscar Wilde, Winston Churchill and Graham Greene were among its many fans. (Via The Book Bench)
The Three Literary Capitals of the World?
by Eva Holland | 12.22.08 | 12:00 PM ET
Conde Nast Traveler has chosen Berlin, Dublin and Boston as its three best cities for bookworms. They’re all worthy choices, but still, I have to ask: Was this list originally titled, “Three Best Cities for Bookworms, Not Counting Paris and London”?
What We Loved This Week: Christmas in Germany, ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ and More
by World Hum | 12.19.08 | 4:33 PM ET
Photo by Terry Ward Morning Links: GlobalPost, 3 a.m. Dining and More
by Michael Yessis | 12.19.08 | 9:54 AM ET
- Behind the scenes at GlobalPost, a new venture that, in the face of the crumbling newspaper industry, will attempt “to create a new model for overseas reporting.”
- A great interactive graphic shows the rise of megacities.
- Christopher Elliott asks: “Is the U.S. travel industry on the verge of a ‘collapse’?”
- Patrick Smith asks: Will the airlines follow Detroit to the government trough?
- Sarah Hepola interviews Brian Raftery, author of Don’t Stop Believin’: How Karaoke Conquered the World and Changed My Life.
- Restaurants across the U.S. are catering to 3 a.m. diners.
- TravelBlogs rounds up some travel bloggers to reveal the books and movies that inspired them to travel.
- IgoUgo picks 10 intriguing New Year’s celebrations.
- National Geographic serves up an interactive graphic of hangover cures from around the world. Tripe soup, anyone?
Gary Shteyngart in Seoul: ‘A Megacity With Endless Incongruities’
by Michael Yessis | 11.21.08 | 10:42 AM ET
Here’s another compelling piece from the author of “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook” and “Absurdistan” in the latest issue of Travel + Leisure. He writes: “Korea is a country with one of the unhappier histories the world has known, a present that amounts to the frenzied tapping of the fast-forward button and a future that may already be here.”
Saving Chekhov’s Yalta ‘White Dacha’ Home
by Jim Benning | 11.20.08 | 11:00 AM ET
The unusual house where Anton Chekhov lived and wrote for several years was turned into a museum in 1921, but it’s now falling apart, and territorial issues aren’t helping matters.
Says the scholar who has launched the Yalta Chekhov Campaign: “[The dacha] is in a strange position. The Russian government didn’t want to fund the restoration because the house is in Ukraine, and the Ukrainian government didn’t want to pay to promote a Russian author.”
Among the actors supporting the effort: Kenneth Branagh and Ralph Fiennes. Classy gents.
Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs on 1940s New York
by Eva Holland | 11.06.08 | 12:05 PM ET
After years of legal wrangling, a collaborative novel by Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs—written years before either of them found fame—has finally been published. And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, a crime story, had remained in limbo for decades because it was based on the real-life murder of one of Kerouac’s and Burroughs’s acquaintances.
R.I.P. Michael Crichton
by Michael Yessis | 11.05.08 | 1:37 PM ET
The author of many blockbuster airplane novels, as well as the simply titled Travels, died yesterday in Los Angeles. He was 66. His travels informed his life. “Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am,” he wrote.
Scottish Hotel Puts Robert Burns’ Portrait on its Toilets
by Michael Yessis | 10.02.08 | 5:57 PM ET
His poem The Selkirk Grace also earned an honored spot on the lids. One of the owners of the hotel, the Selkirk Arms in Kirkcudbright, says he did it in tribute to Rabbie—the poet stayed in the hotel—and to “make customers smile.” Another point, but not one mentioned by the owners: It’s fine bathroom reading material.
The Best (Almost) Fictional British Pubs
by Michael Yessis | 09.30.08 | 2:41 PM ET
Among David Barnett’s picks for great fictional pubs: George Orwell’s The Moon Under Water and Anthony Burgess’ Korova Milk Bar, from A Clockwork Orange. Though they’re products of the authors’ imaginations, it looks like they’re so good they’ve both spawned real-world pubs. In his Guardian piece, Barnett mentions a series of British pubs named The Moon Under Water. I found another in St. Petersburg, Florida.