Travel Blog
Tom Bodett’s ‘Inside Passage’
by Michael Yessis | 01.10.12 | 11:31 PM ET
Brave and amazing storytelling in this Moth podcast by Tom Bodett, who recounts a low point in his life—he nearly blew himself up on a power line—and how he emerged from it with a realization about his father and a beautiful reason to go to Alaska. He writes about telling the story on his blog:
Standing on that stage in Burlington and telling such a personal tale, almost a confessional, in front of 1500 strangers was one of the highlights of my performing life. Until the moment I walked in front of the microphone a big part of me thought I was making a mistake. It was too personal. It was too revealing of a very low point in my character. It would make me choke up.
It was all those things and more and has made me very happy.
Made me choke up, too.
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Yahoo! BuzzPico Iyer Can’t Get Graham Greene Out of his Head
by Eva Holland | 01.09.12 | 8:47 AM ET
In the Los Angeles Review of Books, World Hum contributor Pico Iyer writes about a string of odd coincidences, eerie overlaps and echoes between Graham Greene’s writing and traveling life and his own. Iyer writes:
Not long thereafter, I began working on a book on the 14th Dalai Lama, and as I was sitting in Hiroshima one fall afternoon, listening to one of his general addresses, I realized that the perfect way of summarizing his teachings—for non-Buddhists at least—was by quoting Hamlet: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” A little later, I was staying in a convent on the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem and, needing something to read, picked up a book from the library shelves. It was Greene’s late novel Monsignor Quixote, and when I turned to the title page, there was an epigraph, from Hamlet: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
On and on this went… Perhaps—a skeptic might have said—these were no more than surface coincidences; but when there are so many correspondences, across such a wide canvas, you start to imagine that they might speak for connections of a deeper kind.
So often these days we read of travelers taking off “in the footsteps” of Marco Polo or Genghis Khan or many another distinguished forebear, even Graham Greene. But in this case, I didn’t feel I had to pursue Greene, because he was so busy pursuing me.
Iyer’s latest book, The Man Within My Head, was released last week. It explores his strange relationship with Graham Greene in depth, and The Globe and Mail’s Ronald Wright describes it, in a thoughtful review, as “biography, memoir, travelogue, literary criticism and personal meditation.” I can’t wait to check it out.
(Via @iainmanley)
R.I.P. 2011: From Alberto Granado to Christopher Hitchens
by World Hum | 12.30.11 | 11:40 AM ET
We said goodbye to writers, adventurers, musicians—people who had an impact on travel and the way we see the world.
R.I.P.:
- Christopher Hitchens, writer
- George Whitman, Shakespeare and Company owner
- Cesária Évora, singer from Cape Verde
- Joel Deutsch, writer, poet, World Hum contributor
- Lynn Ferrin, writer and editor
- Facundo Cabral, musician
- Patrick Leigh Fermor, writer
- Alberto Granado, travel companion to Che Guevara
- Poppa Neutrino, adventurer
- Sargent Shriver, Peace Corps founder
R.I.P. Joel Deutsch, Writer, Poet, World Hum Contributor
by Jim Benning | 12.29.11 | 8:16 PM ET
I couldn’t let the year end without noting the recent death of Joel Deutsch, an accomplished poet and writer who contributed an essay to World Hum in the site’s earliest days. He was 67.
I met Joel in the late-‘90s in a novel-writing class at UCLA Extension. He was going blind as a result of retinitis pigmentosa and asked whether anyone could give him a ride home. I volunteered. We talked about reading and writing on that first drive across Los Angeles. Over time, we became good friends.
Joel had been a poet before I met him, publishing in literary journals, editing one of his own. He went on to write moving essays about going blind, many of which appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
In 2001, we published his essay Exits and Entrances, about introducing Russian immigrant friends to American life at a Fourth of July picnic. It captured the shrinking-planet sensibility we always like to explore at World Hum. It was the only piece we published of his, but he never stopped following the development of the site.
Shortly before his death, he completed his first novel, “The Book of Danny.” He was seeking representation for it when he died.
He was a good friend. I miss him.
Pico Iyer on Japan’s ‘Sadness That Will Not Go Away’
by Michael Yessis | 12.29.11 | 7:46 AM ET
Like Daisann McLane in her three-part series about Japan in the wake of its triple disaster, Pico Iyer has captured a haunting snapshot of life in the country post-earthquake and tsunami. He writes for Businessweek:
When I went up to the area around the nuclear plant in October, I found myself staying in, of all places, a golf resort by the sea. Many of the locals had left the area after the disaster, I was told. When I arrived, late at night, the big hotel looked like a ghost town. Only a handful of kimono-clad guests seemed to be enjoying the tea lounge and the play area.
Next morning, I awoke early and went into the breakfast room at 6:15—to find every table packed. Dapper golfers from Tokyo were busy scarfing down their eggs, about to head out for their first round, undeterred by pelting rain and the belching factories that surround the seaside course. In some places this could look like recklessness or indifference; in Japan it seemed to stand for fortitude.
(Via @gary_singh)
Welcome to the Baghdad Country Club
by Eva Holland | 12.27.11 | 2:41 PM ET
In The Atavist, Joshuah Bearman tells the fascinating story of the Baghdad Country Club, the only bar in the capital city’s fortified “Green Zone.” The bar was built and run by a mysterious British ex-military type, a contractor identified only as James. What intrigued me about the bar was the way in which it was both an escape hatch from the war and, at the same time, a place that was inextricably shaped by its surroundings. Here’s a taste:
In addition to tending bar alongside several Iraqi Christians, Heide manned the wholesale bottle shop that James and Ajax ran out of a guard shack on the property. The shelves stocked the finest spirits the pair could find, which sometimes meant actual quality, alongside gift-store items—T-shirts, mugs, and hats emblazoned with the BCC logo and motto: “It Takes Real Balls to Play Here.”
...Danny quietly managed the place: greeting patrons, dealing with staff, and running the kitchen. James wanted the menu to be good, which wasn’t easy. Whereas much of the food in the Green Zone was processed, packaged, shipped, and reconstituted, Ajax got fresh produce and meat for the kitchen. Danny got along well with Iraqis, and he made sure to serve the national dish of masgouf—fish with onion and pickles—alongside Western-style bruschetta, salads, and steaks. He brought in a chef named Dino to come up with recipes and marinades. Good fish was difficult to come by in Baghdad, but James knew a guy who knew a guy who could sometimes get trout flown in on Delta Force choppers. And Ahmed’s regular shipments of spirits kept the bar stocked for proper cocktails.
“We never hoped to get a Michelin star,” Danny says. “But we managed to give people the one thing you don’t have in Baghdad: a choice.”
The full (long) story is available for purchase from The Atavist—it comes in a variety of e-book formats. The Atlantic has a meaty excerpt. It’s a great read.
‘Before Sunrise,’ ‘Before Sunset’ and Aging
by Jim Benning | 12.20.11 | 12:38 PM ET
I often read Nathan Bransford’s blog about the publishing industry. I liked his recent post about the now classic travel films “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset.”
Bransford recently re-watched both films, and he writes about how his perspective on them has changed as he has aged. I know many of us can relate.
What’s amazing about these movies is that because they’re set nine years apart they thoroughly embody this passage of time and maturation that we all go through, while at the same time retaining that essential magic between Jesse and Celine. Life moves on, we change, we age, and yet something essential remains.
And that’s the amazing thing about art. These movies haven’t changed at all since I saw them last, that essence hasn’t moved a bit. But I have changed, the world has changed, and how we all respond to works of art evolves.
The movies may be the same but they mean something different than they used to and they’ll continue to change while remaining exactly the same.
The entire post is worth a read.
As we noted recently, director Richard Linklater and stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy are plotting a third installment in the series.
R.I.P. George Whitman, Shakespeare & Company Owner
by Jim Benning | 12.15.11 | 12:25 PM ET
It’s hard to imagine Paris without Shakespeare & Company, and George Whitman, who died yesterday at the age of 98, owned the famed Left Bank bookstore for years.
He took its name from the original shop owned by Sylvia Beach.
“For decades,” the New York Times notes, “Mr. Whitman provided food and makeshift beds to young aspiring novelists or writing nomads, often letting them spend a night, a week, or even months living among the crowded shelves and alcoves.”
Travel writer Erin Byrne profiled Whitman several years ago, noting that he had “fashioned a life for himself that brings together the two things he loves most in all the world, books and people. It is this combination that makes him tick. Old age without loneliness is unusual; George always has a house full of friends. Fragility without weakness is seldom seen; this man is thin and frail, but his presence is noble.”
His daughter, Sylvia, discusses her father and the store’s history in this terrific video:
Travel Movie Watch: ‘Before Sunrise 3’?
by Eva Holland | 11.21.11 | 8:54 PM ET
Big news for fans of the “Before Sunrise”/“Before Sunset” movies: Director Richard Linklater and stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy are plotting a third installment in the series. Linklater, Hawke and Delpy are co-writers on the films, which, of course, revolve around two young travelers in Europe.
According to Hawke they’re about ready to get started on a new script. Says Hawke: “All three of us have been having similar feelings that we’re ready to revisit those characters. There’s nine years between the first two movies and, if we made the film next summer, it would be nine years again so we’ve really started thinking that would be a good thing to do. We’re going to try write it this year.”
I know, I know. Everybody cringes when a fave flick gets the sequel treatment—and yes, the “Sunrise”/“Sunset” movies are among my all-time favorites. But for me the first sequel, “Before Sunset,” doesn’t just match the original: It betters it. So I’m not about to write off a third movie as overkill. I want to see what happens next—even if Hawke and Co. did leave us, last time, with one of the greatest movie endings of all time.
Rejection Notes for Famous Authors: ‘I Don’t Dig This One at All’
by Eva Holland | 11.21.11 | 7:41 AM ET
The Atlantic has a fun round-up of rejection notes received by some now-famous authors, before they made it big. Among them: Peter Matthiessen and Jack Kerouac, whose “On the Road” is dismissed by a Knopf editor as “huge sprawling and inconclusive.” Said another editor: “I don’t dig this one at all.”
Meet Carolyn Hopkins, aka the Airport Voice
by Eva Holland | 11.17.11 | 7:20 AM ET
CBS offers a fun look behind the travel curtain: an introduction to the woman whose voice we all know from airports, train stations and beyond. (Via Andrew Sullivan)
2011 Lowell Thomas Award Winners Announced
by Eva Holland | 11.10.11 | 12:58 PM ET
This year’s Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award winners were announced this week. Rick Steves was named Travel Journalist of the Year; he also received awards for his video and audio work, as well as his blog. Budget Travel took the gold award for travel magazines. The Los Angeles Times won gold for best travel section in a newspaper with a circulation of 350,000 or more, and the San Francisco Chronicle was named the best newspaper travel section with a circulation under 350,000.
A number of other World Hum contributors were among the writers honored at the awards: Daisann McLane and Nathan Myers received gold awards for individual stories, while Wayne Curtis and Andrew Evans landed bronze awards. Congratulations to all.
The ‘Airport’ Movies: The ‘Best Kind of Guilty Pleasure’
by Michael Yessis | 11.07.11 | 7:12 AM ET
Gerardo Valero finds the cheesy disaster movies of the ‘70s had something important to say.
There’s nothing quite like the movies if you want to learn what people’s hopes and dreams were during the period in which they were made. Take for instance the recent “Up in the Air”. In the present when air travel has turned into something to be endured, George Clooney’s Ryan Bingham showed us how it can become an enticing way of life. The same subject was also portrayed extensively, under a very different light, some forty years as the “Airport” movies dealt with our fears of dying in new and horrible ways, while glamorizing our dreams of flying first-class, surrounded by a movie star in every seat. As the trailer for one of these features once put it: “on board, a collection of the rich and the beautiful!” They also marked the advent of a new genre (the Disaster Film) as well as the “Ark movie” which Ebert’s Little Movie Glossary defines as “mixed bag of characters trapped in a colorful mode of transportation”. How many films can claim to this kind of impact?
I made a similar point in my look back at the 25th anniversary of “Airplane!”
How Does Travel Blogging Fit Into the Travelogue Tradition?
by Michael Yessis | 10.27.11 | 2:25 PM ET
Iain Manley offers his perspective:
Travelogues progressed along a more or less linear path in the twentieth century. Although aeroplanes brought a new kind of fragmentation and the size of the travel industry ballooned, great writers continued travelling and, in magazines, a new, glossy format for descriptions and photographs from a journey was found. The twenty first century has been far more disruptive. The first blogs led quickly to the first travel blogs, instead of the first online travelogues. It was a new medium and perhaps it made sense to use a new name, but instead of marking an upward progression, the phrase travel blog is associated with a feeble form of one of the world’s oldest narrative traditions.
This prejudice is, in the majority of cases, completely justified. Too many travel blogs are facile when they are not fatuous. Blogs that function like letters to friends and family should, perhaps, be excused - even if some of the most readable travelogues of the past two centuries started life as a series of letters - but there are now well over a thousand travel blogs that actively seek an audience, and most of them are depressingly poor. They describe interactions with the travel industry instead of the larger world and are, as a result, like reading badly edited, first person Lonely Planet guides. They are self-reductive, confining their narratives to keywords popular on Google, like solo, solo female, family travel, eco-travel and round the world, which is aptly abbreviated to RTW, because most of these whistle stop gallivants are themselves extremely abbreviated. They are light on history, politics and context in general, but heavy on technically proficient but clichéd photography and vacuous best-of lists. The worst are self-congratulatory and patronising, written with enough gall to inform readers that they too can travel, usually along the same dismal beaten track as the blogger. Most of all - and most of the time - travel blogs are badly written. To capture an audience that browses instead of reading, blog posts must be short, easy to consume and frequent. As a result, there are both good and bad writers with insipid and tedious travel blogs.
R.I.P. Lynn Ferrin
by Eva Holland | 10.24.11 | 7:09 AM ET
The travel writer and long-time editor of the AAA magazine for Northern California died recently at 73. Over at Gadling, Don George has a lovely tribute to his friend and colleague, and to the power of great travel writing:
[Lynn] infused her pieces with the wonder that was at the core of her life’s journey, with the big-heartedness, big-mindedness and sense of limitlessness that graced her days—and that graced all of us who knew her. She brought these gifts to her writing, she dared to reach far and dream big in her stories—she dared to write about the meaning of life. And because she did so, she touched all of us in big, and deep, ways.
This is what we all need to do as travel writers, I think now. We need to dream big, think big, fling out filaments that tie our travels to a wider perspective. Our work matters only as much as we make it matter, and we need to write pieces that matter. We need to honor ourselves and our readers in this way. We need to honor the act of writing and the act of connecting—connecting with the world when we travel, and connecting with our readers when we write. In the same way that we look for the interlocking pieces of the whole, we also need to be those pieces—we need to interlock, article to article, reader to reader, becoming a part of the vast puzzle we seek to understand and replicate.
It’s a high and daunting calling—and thank god for that. Why waste our days aiming low and taking no chances?
