Jason Wilson Thought He Heard the Sound of the Apocalypse
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 09.22.10 | 12:22 PM ET
The series editor of the Best American Travel Writing anthology details the unlikely moment in his new book, Boozehound. The Washington Post has an excerpt, and the moment in question goes like this:
I was chatting with a beautiful, sexy friend who wrote for a magazine that covers luxury spa vacations. She got that job, in part, because she wrote a travel book about bathing culture that one critic claimed “bred a new publishing hybrid, the beauty-travel memoir, Bruce Chatwin by way of Allure magazine.”
As we chatted, I shared some good news with her: I had just been hired to write a column for this newspaper about spirits and cocktails.
You should really meet my friend,” she told me. “He’s the perfume critic at the Times.”
“Really?” I replied. “Let me just see if I’m hearing this correctly. The luxury spa columnist would like the spirits columnist to meet the perfume columnist?”
Yes, she said, with a beautiful, sexy smile.
Wait, I said. Did you just hear that?
“What?”
“Oh, nothing. I thought for just a second that I heard the sound of the Apocalypse.”
The entire excerpt is a great dispatch from the front lines of lifestyle journalism.