Travel Blog: Literary Travel
Revisiting the American Guide Series (Again): Around the U.S. With Saul Bellow and John Steinbeck
by Michael Yessis | 07.15.08 | 5:31 PM ET
They’re among the now-legendary writers who contributed to the American Guide Series, a product of the Federal Writers’ Project during the Great Depression. The project put writers to work creating guides to U.S. states, regions and cities. In the last few years, the guides have seen “a resurgence of interest,” according to New York Times writer William Yardley.
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Yahoo! BuzzSummer Escapes in The Walrus
by Eva Holland | 07.15.08 | 12:53 PM ET
There’s a whole heap of good travel stories in the latest escape-themed issue of The Walrus.
The New Yorker on Summer Reading
by Eva Holland | 07.10.08 | 1:17 PM ET
The New Yorker’s Book Bench bloggers offer some entertaining thoughts on how to choose a reading list for the summer reading season. Jenna Krajeski observes that “a lazy place necessitates its own reading list”—and for her, that means a lake in Maine and a copy of Harry Potter.
Video: Tony Perrottet on the Hunt for Napoleon’s Penis in New Jersey
by Jim Benning | 07.10.08 | 11:20 AM ET
World Hum contributor and “Napoleon’s Privates” author Tony Perrottet just spoke to World Hum about his new book. In this video, he tracks down the traveling relic in New Jersey, of all places:
New Travel Book: ‘A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean’
by Elyse Franko | 07.08.08 | 5:15 PM ET
Full title: “A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean: A Grump in Paradise Discovers that Anyplace it’s Legal to Carry a Machete is Comedy Just Waiting to Happen”
Author: Gary Buslik
Released: June 2008
Travel genre: Bad-natured travel, island travel
Territory covered: The Caribbean
Is Travel Literature In Crisis (Again)?
by Eva Holland | 07.02.08 | 2:08 PM ET
Marian Botsford Fraser certainly isn’t the first to say so in recent months, but in an essay in The Walrus, she offers a more colorful, thoughtful argument than most. “What we carelessly refer to as ‘travel literature,’” she writes, “is, at this moment, a pirogue trapped in a cul-de-sac of a mangrove swamp on an African river—waterways the Victorian writer Mary Kingsley described in her ‘Travels in West Africa’ as ‘utter frauds which will ground you within half an hour of your entering them.’”
An Epic Account of the Naming of ‘Just About Everything in America’
by Michael Yessis | 07.01.08 | 11:23 AM ET
It’s all in Names on the Land, George Rippey Stewart’s soon-to-be-reissued 1945 book about how America’s “creeks and valleys, rivers and mountains, streets and schools, towns and cities, counties and states, the country and continent itself” were named. In Slate, Matt Weiland calls the tome “a masterpiece of American writing and American history.” Among the tidbits he highlights: “The original name proposed for the state that became New Jersey was Albania.”
Related on World Hum:
* What’s in a Place Name?
* Esquire Complains About Hotel Bar Names
The Field-Tested Books Project
by Michael Yessis | 06.26.08 | 2:51 PM ET
Great concept: A collection of short essays about how “our perception of a book is affected by the place where we read it. Or maybe the other way around.” Dozens of writers were asked to chime in for the 2008 edition, including Andrei Codrescu (he read “Under the Volcano” by Malcolm Lowry, in Oaxaca, Mexico), Lauren Groff (“Les Miserables” by Victor Hugo, in Notre Dame des Landes, France) and Kevin Guilfoile (“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain, on U.S. Highways I-79, I-77 and I-95). (via Jaunted)
Related on World Hum:
* ‘Literary History is Pretty Much One Disgruntled Traveler After Another’
Chatwin Was Right About the Urge to Travel
by Frank Bures | 06.24.08 | 12:25 PM ET
Bruce Chatwin famously made the case for an innate urge to travel, a la nomadism, in his books Anatomy of Restlessness and The Songlines. Now the Economist is reporting that scientists have found a genetic marker that rewards “exploratory behavior” and “novelty seeking.” The paper observes, “One suggestion is that long-distance migration selects for long alleles (see chart) because they reward exploratory behaviour. This might be an advantage in migratory societies because it encourages people to hunt down resources when they constantly move through unfamiliar surroundings.”
‘Literary History is Pretty Much One Disgruntled Traveler After Another’
by Jim Benning | 06.19.08 | 11:31 AM ET
Dear American Airlines author Jonathan Miles is not the first writer to capitalize on travel frustrations, blogs the Los Angeles Times’ Christopher Reynolds. He offers several examples from literary history. Among them: “In ‘The Canterbury Tales,’ 29 bed-and-breakfast guests, all on their way to Canterbury, indulge in a marathon of oversharing that any sensible innkeeper would have nipped in the bud.” Thanks, Christopher, for allowing us another chance to celebrate the wife of Bath, the cook, the knight, all “nyne and twenty” pilgrims—just some of our favorite fictional travelers of all time.
Related on World Hum:
* 10 Greatest Fictional Travelers
* New Travel Book: ‘Dear American Airlines’
Ezra Pound, Foreign Correspondent
by Eva Holland | 06.16.08 | 10:21 AM ET
In the latest issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review, Jon Schneider writes about Ezra Pound’s unlikely (and brief) stint as a European correspondent for the Richmond News Leader, during his final years in Italy. Included with the essay are scanned images of Pound’s “feisty, allusive” submissions to the paper—all but one of which were deemed unpublishable by the editor.
New Travel Book: ‘First Stop in the New World’
by Frank Bures | 06.12.08 | 5:57 PM ET
Full title: “First Stop in the New World: Mexico City, the Capital of the 21st Century”
Author: David Lida
Released: Today
Travel genre: Into the big city
Territory covered: Mexico City
Five Writers’ Tales From Hotels
by Michael Yessis | 06.12.08 | 1:06 PM ET
Nice little essays in Travel + Leisure from five writers chronicling time spent at hotels around the world. Among the contributors: Gary Shteyngart (The Heathman Hotel in Portland, Oregon), Mark Leyner (Grand Hotel Sofia in Sofia, Bulgaria) and Daphne Merkin (Mizpe Hayamim in Rosh Pina, Israel).
Shakespeare & Company’s Paris Literary Festival
by Jim Benning | 06.11.08 | 12:22 PM ET
Who among us would not like to be in Paris for this? The third annual festival organized by the famed left bank bookstore takes place June 12-15 and will feature Paul Auster, Jeannette Winterson, June Chang and Alain de Botton, among others. This year’s theme: “Exploring Memoir and Biography.” (Via TEV and IHT)
Photo by ktylerconk via Flickr, (Createive Commons).
New (Sort of) Travel Book: ‘Stalin’s Nose’
by Frank Bures | 06.10.08 | 4:04 PM ET
Full title: “Stalin’s Nose: Across the Face of Europe”
Author: Rory MacLean, also the author of “Under the Dragon: A Journey through Burma”
Released: Originally in 1992; reissued today with a new preface by Colin Thubron
Travel genre: Roots travel
Territory covered: Berlin to Moscow
