Tag: Literature
Why Aren’t Students Reading Travel Books?
by Jim Benning | 03.11.10 | 1:23 PM ET
Students at all grade levels read a lot more fiction than nonfiction—think Mark Twain and J.K. Rowling. As Tom Kuntz points out in the New York Times, a recent survey found that of the top 20 books being read these days by high school students, only two are nonfiction.
Many observers are rightfully questioning why students aren’t reading more nonfiction.
Writes Jay Mathews in the Washington Post:
Educators say non-fiction is more difficult than fiction for students to comprehend. It requires more factual knowledge, beyond fiction’s simple truths of love, hate, passion and remorse. So we have a pathetic cycle. Students don’t know enough about the real world because they don’t read non-fiction and they can’t read non-fiction because they don’t know enough about the real world.
It’s a conundrum. But it seems to me great nonfiction travel narratives would be a perfect solution—or at least a start.
Travel writers often approach their subjects with what’s known in Zen as beginner’s mind. They write about places from the perspective of an outsider. They’re students of the world. Ideally, they take readers on a journey—a real adventure—that is fun and entertaining and, yes, educational.
I’m thinking of writers like Paul Theroux (“Dark Star Safari” or “The Old Patagonian Express”), Tim Cahill (“Road Fever”) and Bill Bryson (“A Walk in the Woods”), just to name a few.
Any other suggestions? What about a bestselling book like “Eat, Pray, Love”?
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Yahoo! BuzzUniversity of Texas Acquires David Foster Wallace Archive
by Eva Holland | 03.09.10 | 4:14 PM ET
The collection includes DFW’s childhood and college writings, handwritten drafts of “Infinite Jest,” and his heavily marked-up copies of books by Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, John Updike and others. The university press release includes links to high-res images of a few items from the archive. (Via Kottke)
David Foster Wallace was, of course, the author of one of our favorite travel stories: Shipping Out.
Inspiration, Travel Writing and L’Esprit Frondeur
by Jeffrey Tayler | 02.25.10 | 11:16 AM ET
iStockPhoto What will you do that will be different and worthy of recounting? Jeffrey Tayler on the writer's life.
Nine Subversive Travel Novels
by Thomas Kohnstamm | 01.13.10 | 11:11 AM ET
Thomas Kohnstamm celebrates fiction that uncovers deeper truths about travel and the world
Nine Subversive Travel Books
by Thomas Kohnstamm | 01.12.10 | 12:17 PM ET
Thomas Kohnstamm celebrates books that really rocked the boat
Paul Theroux’s New Novel: ‘A Dead Hand’
by Jim Benning | 11.18.09 | 1:50 PM ET
Paul Theroux’s new novel isn’t scheduled to be released in the U.S. until February 2010, but it’s already getting mixed reviews in the British press. It’s a mystery of sorts set in Calcutta and featuring a down-on-his-luck travel-writer-protagonist named Jerry Delfont.
Intriguingly, writes Doug Johnstone in The Independent:
Midway through the book, Delfont meets a fictional veteran US travel writer called Paul Theroux, a more successful and famous version of Delfont, whom he despises. The next 20 pages amount to a diatribe by Delfont about the act of travel writing, describing it as an emotionally stunted, puerile and selfish pastime, and brutally denouncing anyone who is stupid and arrogant enough to do it. This remarkable interlude is compelling, like rubbernecking a psychological car crash - but the rest of the novel is distinctly patchy, the bad points eventually outweighing the good.
Apparently the sex writing in the book leaves something to be desired. Once again, Theroux has been nominated for the Literary Review’s annual Bad Sex in Fiction award.
Following Chekhov to ‘Hell’
by Robert Reid | 11.04.09 | 10:41 AM ET
Photo by Robert Reid On Sakhalin Island, Robert Reid communes with the world's first "Gulag tourist"
Get Your Sordid Kerouac Estate Details Here
by Eva Holland | 10.30.09 | 12:44 PM ET
The Telegraph delves into the ongoing nasty legal battle over the Jack Kerouac estate. It’s not pretty, though it is dramatic—a disowned daughter, a forged will and a couple of deaths by liver failure are all in the mix. The story also notes that Kerouac’s unpublished first novel, which we blogged about earlier this year, will be out in 2010.
The Perfect Traveler
by Pico Iyer | 10.28.09 | 10:13 AM ET
He was cool, steady and prone to breaking rules. Pico Iyer celebrates the life and work of Somerset Maugham.
Travel and the National Book Award
by Eva Holland | 10.16.09 | 3:25 PM ET
The finalists for this year’s National Book Award have been announced, and there are a couple of familiar names on the list. Marcel Theroux—son of Paul, and a sometime travel journalist himself—is nominated in the fiction category for his novel, “Far North,” while Greg Grandin’s Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City landed on the nonfiction shortlist.
Audio Interview With Peter Ferry: ‘Travel Writing’
by Jim Benning | 10.14.09 | 11:14 AM ET
Jim Benning asks the World Hum contributor about writing novels and non-fiction
Dan Brown Tourism Hits D.C.
by Eva Holland | 09.30.09 | 12:06 PM ET
That was quick. Two weeks after the release of his latest, “The Lost Symbol,” and the Dan Brown-themed travel stories about the city where it’s set—Washington, D.C.—are already piling up.
The Swedish Novel has ‘a Passport in its Back Pocket’
by Eva Holland | 09.17.09 | 3:58 PM ET
A group of Swedish writers have published a manifesto for Swedish literature in the 2010s. “We want to write books which are read, thumbed, torn out of the hands of angry taxpayers, borrowed and distributed to the max, quoted, imitated and translated,” they wrote. “The Swedish novel has brown eyes and black hair, it’s bald, green-eyed, blind and hook-nosed. It carries a collection of poetry in its breast pocket, a passport in its back pocket, and wears high heels.” (Via The Book Bench)
Travel Movie Watch: ‘A Moveable Feast’
by Eva Holland | 09.17.09 | 10:29 AM ET
Hemingway’s classic Paris memoir looks to be getting the book-to-big-screen treatment: The author’s granddaughter, actress Mariel Hemingway, has acquired the film and TV rights and is moving ahead with the project. There are no details yet, but plenty of intriguing questions. For instance, how might the movie handle the editing controversies of the book’s two dueling print editions? And who will play Hemingway, not to mention the cast of literary all-stars—Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald and more—that surrounded him in Paris?
As always when a favorite book is being adapted, I’m nervous and skeptical. But I’m also very, very curious to see how this one plays out. (Via EW’s News Briefs Blog)
What Would ‘Walden’ be Called if it Were Published Today?
by Eva Holland | 09.16.09 | 1:20 PM ET
According to this fun list of revised book titles: “Camping with Myself: Two Years in American Tuscany.” (Via The Daily Dish)
Roald Dahl’s Childhood Candy Store Found
by Eva Holland | 09.14.09 | 11:29 AM ET
Call it Charlie and the Chinese take-out joint. A literary landmark has been rediscovered at the Great Wall of China restaurant in Llandaff, Wales—where researchers believe Mrs. Pratchett’s Sweet Shop, the store thought to be the inspiration for Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “The Twits,” was originally located. A historic marker will go up this week, and I’m sure the Dahl pilgrims won’t be far behind. (Via The Book Bench)
Margaret Drabble’s Favorite Literary Landscapes
by Eva Holland | 09.10.09 | 10:48 AM ET
The author picks 10 British spots that have inspired her fellow writers, from Tennyson’s Tintagel to Godrevy Lighthouse, of “To the Lighthouse” fame.
Congolese Man Plans New Lawsuit Against Tintin
by Michael Yessis | 09.02.09 | 12:40 PM ET
Cover art from The Adventures of Tintin Vols. 6-10 Two years ago Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo filed suit in Belgium, demanding Tintin in the Congo be removed from the market because of its “racism and xenophobia.” He got no response from the Belgian legal system, so he’s planning to “launch parallel proceedings in France and go ‘all the way to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary,’” according to the Telegraph.
“Tintin in the Congo” has been stirring up controversy in the U.S. recently, too. Last month the book was removed from the shelves of a Brooklyn, New York, library—news that made the mash-up map of book bannings in America that Eva wrote about yesterday.
Tintin, of course, has been celebrated by many people—including Julia Ross here on World Hum—for its “power to unite travelers and melt national divides.” (Via The Slatest)
Book Bannings in America, Mapped
by Eva Holland | 09.01.09 | 1:25 PM ET
Banned Books Week has a mashup of all the book bans (and resulting challenges) in the Lower 48 over the last two years. Anyone expecting a certain, er, geographical censorship concentration might be in for a surprise: Brooklyn and the Bay Area, for instance, are represented right alongside the more stereotypical suspects. (Via The Book Bench)
Lord of the Flies: ‘Absurd and Uninteresting’?
by Eva Holland | 09.01.09 | 11:25 AM ET
Apparently, William Golding’s castaway classic really made the rounds before finally being published, and one unimpressed reader’s note on the manuscript has just surfaced. After calling the book an “absurd and uninteresting fantasy,” she wrote: “A group of children who land in jungle country near New Guinea. Rubbish & dull. Pointless.”
Dull? I’d love to know what her idea of an eventful island getaway is. (Via The Book Bench)