Travel Blog: Life of a Travel Writer
Jan Morris on the Practice of Travel
by Michael Yessis | 02.02.04 | 9:29 PM ET
Noted travel author Jan Morris has a terrific how-to piece in this Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, featuring gems like this: “Never disregard anything,” she writes. “No sensation, no happening, no encounter, no experience at all, is irrelevant to the practice of travel. For myself I am perfectly happy to go to dentists in foreign lands (some foreign lands, anyway), because half an hour in the torture chair may do nothing for my toothache, but may well give me material. Nothing comes amiss to the practiced traveler.”
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Yahoo! BuzzThe South Florida Travel Editor Diet?
by Jim Benning | 01.29.04 | 10:07 PM ET
That’s right. Forget the ultra-trendy South Beach Diet. South Florida Sun-Sentinel Travel Editor Thomas Swick has come up with a diet of his own sure to attract the masses: “The South Florida Travel Editor Diet.” Swick’s key piece of advice: travel. “Abroad, we all walk more than we do at home, and we do it painlessly, not worrying about calories burnt but concentrating on the architecture and the curious signs and the coy window displays,” he wrote in last week’s column. “Not to mention the crowds of people—slim and hardy—who are walking along with us.” How to explain the veteran travel editor’s sudden interest in diets? We have a theory. Swick, whose collection of travel stories, “A Way to See the World,” was recently published by The Lyons Press, no doubt saw “The South Beach Diet” book on the New York Times bestseller list and began brainstorming. Diet books, after all, always outsell travel books in the U.S. Which is why we suspect Swick has a lucrative travel-diet book deal in the works. Brilliant!
Tim Cahill: “It is Always a Scramble From Paycheck to Paycheck”
by Jim Benning | 01.14.04 | 9:12 PM ET
Memo to struggling writers everywhere: The writing business still isn’t easy for the likes of Tim Cahill, founding editor of Outside magazine, author of numerous books, and one of America’s best adventure writers. As he tells Rolf Potts in an interview recently posted on Potts’ Web site: “Finances are most problematic. I make pretty good money, but most of it comes from magazines, all of which are currently (2003) suffering an advertising drought. I am currently making 25% less than I was about four years ago. In my house, it is always a scramble from paycheck to paycheck.” I’m not sure whether to feel depressed or reassured that Cahill faces this problem. I’m afraid the answer is the former. But before throwing in the writing towel, note that Cahill has plenty to say about the upsides of his work, too: “I am living out my adolescent dream of travel and adventure.”
Travel Writers Miss Their Dogs, Too
by Michael Yessis | 11.13.03 | 8:33 PM ET
Most travel writers realize that their job, to most people, is a fantasy job. Thus, you won’t often hear a travel writer complain about her job in public. And it’s even more rare to see gripes in print, which makes Melissa Marshall’s essay “Nice Work, or is it?” on MediaBistro.com particularly noteworthy. Her piece chronicles some of the downsides she’s encountered as a travel writer—missing her family and dog, and having to write “glorified ad copy” among them. But, in the end, Marshall realizes that the upside of the travel writing life is pretty good. She writes: “This is nice work, if you can get it.”
Tim Cahill on the Downside of Enlightenment
by Jim Benning | 11.12.03 | 8:34 PM ET
Jennifer Leo offers a colorful account of Cahill’s San Francisco appearance on her weblog.
Jonathan Raban in London
by Jim Benning | 10.31.03 | 8:46 PM ET
Until weblogs came along, you didn’t hear much about author readings in bookstores. Newspapers rarely feature accounts of the events. At most, they publish a single sentence beforehand noting the date and time. (Most U.S. newspaper editors are convinced that their readers dislike reading, as absurd as that sounds.) All of which is to say that I was delighted when a friend pointed out a detailed weblog account of travel writer and novelist Jonathan Raban’s August reading in London. Raban focused on his new novel, Waxwings. “First up, Raban discussed his penchant for writing fictionalised non-fiction, and then fiction with real-life characters and events, blurring these boundaries,” according to the thoughtful City of Sound blog. Interestingly, Raban himself responded to the weblog’s account. “I was saying to someone (in Seattle) last night,” he wrote, “that your version of that evening corresponded strangely closely with my own…”
“I Am Not a Domestic Tyrant”
by Jim Benning | 10.06.03 | 9:18 PM ET
Depending on your perspective, the story is either every travel writer’s worst nightmare or the worst nightmare of anyone who has ever invited a writer into his home. Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad was covering the war in Afghanistan when a curious Kabul bookseller invited her to stay with him, to see from the inside what life for locals was like. Seierstad accepted the invitation and wrote a non-fiction book about it, “The Bookseller of Kabul,” which is flying off bookshelves in Europe. Trouble is, the bookseller in question happened to read an English translation of the book, and he doesn’t agree with Seierstad’s conclusion that he is a tyrant, and that the women in his home live in slavery. He was so angered by her portrayal of him, in fact, that he has flown to Europe to speak out against the book, calling it “shameful,” and promising to sue the author. “There is more than a smattering of irony that a man who loves literature and has devoted himself to publishing now finds his life scarred by a book,” reporter William Wallace writes in a fascinating account of the conflict in the Los Angeles Times. “And it is equally troubling to see a man who risked his life to hide books from both Soviet and Islamic fundamentalist censors now demand that an offending book be banned, stripped from bookstore shelves and burned.” Free registration is required to access the article.
Update: Backpack Nation
by Jim Benning | 09.26.03 | 9:28 PM ET
Travel author Brad Newsham, who launched the organization Backpack Nation in the wake of September 11, 2001 to help spread prosperity and goodwill around the globe, announced Thursday that his first ambassador has selected a group to receive the organization’s first $10,000 donation. The money will go to Microfund for Women, which makes loans to female entrepreneurs in Palestinian refugee camps near Ahman, Jordan. When we last wrote about Newsham’s plan on this blog, at least one reader worried that the money could be squandered on people unprepared for such a windfall. But it appears that Newsham has done some careful vetting. He said that Microfund for Women has earned praise from the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Treasury Department. He writes on Backpack Nation’s Web site: “I am working to try to get a reporter to visit the camps soon and write about how they look, sound, smell, and feel—and also to write about the lives of some of the specific people to whom our money will be delivered, so that we can get a sense of the human impact of this venture of ours.”
What Makes Good Travel Writing?
by Jim Benning | 09.18.03 | 9:33 PM ET
Lonely Planet’s Don George offers his take in his latest column.
The Curse of the Tenacious Tourist
by Michael Yessis | 09.17.03 | 1:29 AM ET
How do you shake the fellow traveler who clings to you and just won’t let you be? It’s not easy, writes San Francisco Chronicle columnist John Flinn. His ditching of “Gaston,” a fifty-something, air-guitar strumming Parisian postman who wouldn’t leave him and his wife alone has left him feeling awful. “It had to be done,” Flinn writes. “But instead of feeling relief, I felt horrible, like a real jerk.”
And the Rickniks Shall Inherit the Earth
by Michael Yessis | 09.13.03 | 1:31 AM ET
Bruce Newman profiles guidebook mogul Rick Steves in the September issue of Via. What makes Steves stand out in a saturated marketplace? It just might be because he has personality. Yes, personality. “In the last generation there were Fodor, Fielding, Frommer, and Birnbaum—four famous guys,” says Steves. “Now publishers hire these anonymous craftspeople to write their books, and editors take out all the personal references, so you don’t even know if it’s a man or a woman writing.” He, on the other hand, still does much of his own reporting and writing, and his devoted followers—“Rickniks”—love him for it.
If You Restore It and Write a Hit Book About It, They Will Come
by Jim Benning | 09.09.03 | 1:21 AM ET
Frances Mayes’ memoir, “Under the Tuscan Sun,” about restoring an old Italian villa, has been turned into a Hollywood movie that hits U.S. theaters September 26. That means that Mayes and her story are in the media spotlight in a big way. So what happens when you write a wildly popular memoir about a Tuscan villa? As the Los Angeles Times noted in an article Sunday about the movie, tourists flock to the place. “Last month, the Brazilians and Hungarians traipsed by,” the article states. “[Mayes] says the nationalities go in waves depending on where the book was most recently released. Americans, although there are fewer of them in Europe this summer, are a staple.” Understandably, Mayes says she misses the old days. Such is the Faustian bargain so often associated with travel and memoir writing. Because of a new Los Angeles Times policy, the article is not available free online.
The Critic: “12,000 Miles in the Nick of Time”
by Jim Benning | 08.09.03 | 12:11 AM ET
Wonder What You’d Do if Your Passport was Stolen, Your Plane was Leaving and the Embassy Was Closed?
by Michael Yessis | 08.05.03 | 12:38 AM ET
I do. Turns out it’s not so bad if you have the luck Dale Koppel had. She tells her story in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Siberia by Train on Microsoft’s Dime
by Michael Yessis | 08.01.03 | 12:47 AM ET
Bill Gifford is on the road the week chronicling his trans-Siberian journey in the latest installment of Slate’s Well Traveled. Gifford’s reports have been some of the best since the multimedia feature debuted. Here’s a nice scene from a train stop in Barabinsk: “As the train pulls in, a crowd of vendors swarms each doorway, wielding buckets of berries, plates with a few stale rolls, and dozens upon dozens of dried fish. They come in all sizes and shapes, from strings full of stubby things, barely big enough for bait, to an impressive 2-foot specimen turned yellow from the smoke. The fish are split open and desiccated, twisted into postures of agony, rather like their gold-toothed, hard-bitten vendors.”
