Travel Blog: Literary Travel

This week, we interviewed James Teitelbaum, author of “Tiki Road Trip: A Guide to Tiki Culture in North America.” We asked Teitelbaum to recommend a few tiki-related books (guides, narratives, anything). Here’s what he suggested:

Aku-Aku by Thor Heyerdahl
Teitelbaum says: “That’s really the book that made me want to visit Easter Island. It’s very readable, with suspense, humor. It’s a good all-around read.”

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Recalling Jack London’s ‘The Road’

by Jim Benning | 08.01.07 | 12:08 PM ET

While Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, Jack London’s road trip book, The Road, celebrates its 100th anniversary—albeit with much less fanfare. Yet, writes Jonah Raskin in a terrific piece in The Nation, “London’s account of his wild, eye-opening journey across the country by railroad, boat, on foot—and even barefoot, when his shoes fell apart—remains a pivotal work in the cultural history of America’s long obsession with road travel, roadside attractions and road books.” Not only did “The Road” inspire Kerouac to become a writer, Raskin notes, but it was “a Beat memoir before the advent of the Beats, and an existentialist narrative before the arrival of existentialism.”

Related on World Hum:
* Video: Steve Allen interviews Jack Kerouac
* Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’ Scroll Enjoying Super Bowl Press

Al Gore, Are You Out to Destroy Travel Literature?

by Jim Benning | 07.17.07 | 10:46 AM ET

We know you’re out to save the planet, but have you given any thought to how your campaign to reduce emissions will affect travel literature? What’s that? You haven’t really considered it? Well writer Steve Coronella has. “[L]ately I’ve been wondering whether Al Gore has signaled the end of travel writing as we have come to know it,” Coronella writes in the Cape Cod Times. “Will the long-haul literary excursion become an indefensible extravagance in the face of global warming and the accompanying public outcry that we all need to reduce our ‘carbon footprint’ to combat it?”

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Revisiting ‘Eat, Pray, Love’: A ‘Transcendently Great Beach Book’

by Michael Yessis | 07.06.07 | 12:03 PM ET

Now that it’s locked into bestseller lists and Julia Roberts is making a movie out of it, Elizabeth Gilbert’s travel book “Eat, Pray, Love” is a bona fide cultural phenomenon. It’s a fixture on the World Hum Travel Zeitgeist, it’s the celebrity must-read of the moment and a go-to summer book recommendation. It’s also getting a second look from critics such as Slate’s Katie Roiphe, who calls “Eat, Pray, Love” “precisely the sort of inspirational story of one woman’s journey to recovery that I would never expect myself to pick up in a bookshop.” Yet she reads it, and likes it.

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The Critics: ‘Travels With Herodotus’

by Ben Keene | 07.03.07 | 4:13 PM ET

Many of us rely on guidebooks when we travel, whether for practical advice, personal insight or a bit of simple reassurance. Ryszard Kapuscinski, or “the legendary chronicler of anarchy” as he’s called in the July issue of Outside, apparently never made a trip without his copy of The Histories by the 5th century BC Greek polymath, Herodotus. Writing for the magazine, Patrick Symmes aptly describes the newish Travels With Herodotus—it was published in Polish in his native country in 2004—as a “final gift, a call to wander widely and see deeply” from the journalist. Since the appearance of an English edition on bookshelves earlier this month, lengthy reviews have peppered periodicals in Canada and England, as well as across the United States. World Hum’s review appears today. With one exception that I was able to find, all of them—perhaps knowing it was their last chance—nearly fall over themselves offering praise.

Colin Thubron on ‘The Road to Oxiana’

by Jim Benning | 06.27.07 | 8:11 AM ET

Travel writer Colin Thubron celebrates Robert Byron’s classic 1937 travel narrative The Road to Road to Oxiana in Saturday’s Guardian. “Witty, lyrical, erudite, combative, it still strikes the reader with a vivid contemporary immediacy,” he writes. “Composed in the form of a random diary, its deceptively conversational tone was, of course, the result of meticulous craft. Spiky character sketches and farcical conversations (replete with musical notation) are interlaced with news clippings, scholarly digressions and some of the most precise and beautiful architectural descriptions in the language.”

Related on World Hum:
* No. 2: ‘The Road to Oxiana’ by Robert Byron
* Truth in Oxiana
* ‘No Particular Place to Go’: A BBC Radio Celebration of Great Works of British Travel Literature
* No. 23: ‘Behind the Wall’ by Colin Thubron

From ‘Moby-Dick’ to ‘After Dark’: Book Picks For Travelers

by Michael Yessis | 06.25.07 | 11:04 AM ET

We’ve got our Three Great Books feature and our list of the 30 best travel books. Salon has its Literary Guide to the World. And this weekend the Guardian and the Financial Times recommend more books for travelers. The Guardian turns to several of the world’s most traveled writers to find out the most memorable books of their travels. Among them: Bill Bryson, who picked up Vladimir Nabokov’s Pnin and Jeffrey Archer’s Kane and Abel in a Norwegian charity shop; Pico Iyer, who read Graham Greene’s The Comedians by candlelight in a hotel in Bhutan; and Jenny Diski, who read Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick while in a boat sailing around the Antarctic Peninsula.

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Touring Literary Los Angeles: City of Chandler, Bukowski and Fante

by Jim Benning | 06.21.07 | 12:53 PM ET

In some cities, like Dublin, visitors have little trouble finding a good literary tour. Los Angeles is not one of those cities, yet it has a compelling literary history. So I was happy to read Sunday’s Los Angeles Times story about a new tour of Los Angeles through the prism of novelist John Fante, focusing particularly on Fante’s old downtown haunts, including Bunker Hill. Fante isn’t as well known as L.A. novelists Raymond Chandler and Charles Bukowski (even though Fante’s classic novel Ask the Dust was recently made into a movie), so it would stand to reason, I thought, that the people behind the Fante tour were not your typical tour operators. I dialed up Richard Schave, co-founder of the recently formed tour company Esotouric (“bus adventures into the secret heart of L.A.”) to ask him about their adventures into L.A.‘s bookish heart. It turns out the Fante tour is just the beginning.

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‘No Particular Place to Go’: A BBC Radio Celebration of Great Works of British Travel Literature

by Michael Yessis | 06.13.07 | 4:40 PM ET

It’s a feast of British travel writing this week on BBC Radio 3. The program The Essay is featuring audio essays by modern travel writers about great works of travel literature written by British authors—“books that changed the way we saw the world and the art of writing about it,” according to the promo copy. It started Monday with William Dalrymple discussing Fanny Parkes and her book about India, “A Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque.” The rest of the schedule:

 

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Nicolas Bouvier: ‘Switzerland’s Answer to Jack Kerouac’

by Jim Benning | 06.05.07 | 1:53 PM ET

That’s some high praise, and it’s Rory MacLean’s take on the Swiss writer who died in 1998. An English translation of Bouvier’s book “The Way of the World,” about the 19 months the author spent traveling through Europe and Asia with a friend in a Fiat in the 1950s, has just been published in the UK.

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The Critics: Summer Travel Books

by Michael Yessis | 06.04.07 | 11:35 AM ET

More proof that, despite the naysayers, travel books remain an interesting, vibrant genre: The New York Times Book Review’s annual list of summer reading includes books by Diswasher Pete and Miss Manners. No Vulgar Hotel: The Desire and Pursuit of Venice by Judith Martin (aka Miss Manners) and Dishwasher: One Man’s Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States by Pete Jordan (aka Dishwasher Pete) are among the six travel books reviewed by Pamela Paul. She gives a hesitant thumbs up to both. “Probably in spite of, and not courtesy of, its irresponsible narrator, ‘Dishwasher’ is almost compulsively readable,” she writes.

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The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: The Seeing Stars Edition

by Michael Yessis | 06.01.07 | 6:41 PM ET

Kelly Slater, Billy Graham and Harry Potter all make the Zeitgeist this week as travelers contemplate Hawaiian surf, learning to speak French, Planet Theme Park and the alleged return of the Loch Ness monster.

Most Viewed Travel Story
Los Angeles Times (current)
Q&A: Eight-Time World Champion Surfer Kelly Slater
* He says the sight of the heavens from Mauna Kea (pictured) is probably the best view in Hawaii.

Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
36 Hours in Florence

Most Read Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
Harry Potter, Billy Graham Get Theme Parks

Most E-Mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
Travelers Face Frustrating Passport Delays
* Earlier on World Hum: U.S. Passports in Demand: Lines Look ‘Like a Rolling Stones Concert 25 Years Ago’

Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (recent)
Panoramio
* The site allows users “to locate photos exactly over the place they were taken.” It’s also being acquired by Google.

Most Popular Travel Podcast
iTunes (current)
National Geographic’s Atmosphere
* The pitch: “It’s not quite as cool as teletransporting, but it’s close.”

“Hot This Week” Destination
Yahoo! (this week)
Cheyenne, Wyoming

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Aracataca, Colombia: It’s ‘Latin America All Wrapped Up In One Small Place’

by Michael Yessis | 06.01.07 | 5:13 PM ET

The impression of Aracataca, Colombia as a representation of the entirety of Latin America stems from Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the man who 40 years ago thinly disguised his hometown and used it as a setting for his classic novel, “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” Marquez returned to Aracataca for the first time in 25 years the other day, an event noted by many news outlets, including NPR. Juan Forero covered the homecoming for ‘Morning Edition,’ and his audio postcard from Aracataca gives a great sense of the town and just how much the residents love and appreciate the man they call Gabo.

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Interview with Seal Press Founder Barbara Sjoholm

by Jim Benning | 05.31.07 | 4:05 PM ET

Seal Press publishes loads of books featuring women’s travel writing—recent titles include Greece: A Love Story: Women Write About Their Greek Experience and The Risks of Sunbathing Topless: And Other Funny Stories from the Road. Gadling has posted an interview that Kelly Amabile did with the founder, Barbara Sjoholm. In addition to founding the company, Sjoholm is a novelist and the author the memoir Incognito Street: How Travel Made Me a Writer.

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