Few travel writers evoke such strong reactions as Paul Theroux. Readers often find him cruel and cold or disarmingly honest and wickedly funny. Regardless, few would deny that his first travel book, The Great Railway Bazaar, published in 1975, gave travel writing a much-needed shot in the arm—and many insist that with it, Theroux single-handedly reinvented the genre. In chronicling that train ride across Asia, Theroux writes that he wanted to “put in everything that I found lacking in the other books—dialogue, characters, discomfort—and leave out museums, churches and sightseeing generally.” It turned out to be a formula for success and the many books that followed—The Old Patagonian Express and Riding the Iron Rooster, to name a couple—made Theroux America’s most revered travel writer.

His new book, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, released today, retraces that first trip. It’s Theroux at his best, and it gave him a chance to reflect on how he and the world have changed in the intervening three decades. I dialed him up at his home in Cape Cod to ask him about it. I’d heard Theroux could be prickly and a difficult interview; I found him to be anything but.

World Hum: Near the start of “Ghost Train,” you write that “The lesson in my Tao of Travel was that if one is loved and feels free and has gotten to know the world somewhat, travel is simpler and happier.” And you also write, “After a certain age the traveler stops looking for another life and takes nothing for granted.” Can you talk about that? Is that to suggest that you enjoy travel now more than you did when you were younger?

Paul Theroux: I feel less pressure to produce something. At my age, I don’t have to write another book. I can kick back and read a book. Or if I go to a place, I don’t necessarily have to make something of it. It might be a trip that’s a dead end; nothing may come of it. When you’re young and you are working as a writer and traveler, everything has to count. I began writing with a kind of anxiety that I had to make a living at it. That was 40 years ago. The pressure to make something your subject is intense when you’re young, because you think, I don’t have a lot of time. I’ve got to turn this into saleable prose.

Strangely enough, when you get older you realize you’ve got a lot of time and a lot of freedom. I think I’m happier now, less tense, less anxious to make something of it. And so when you’re patient, travel is a different experience—when you’re not thinking, I have to go home or this trip has an end. You might think, well, I’ll stay another month; I could get to know people. The older traveler is less optimistic about things, maybe a little more skeptical when people tell him things. All of those are components in the new book, which was written, I think, in a different spirit from the first travel book, “The Great Railway Bazaar.”

In fact, there’s a revelation of sorts in the new book that when you did embark on that first trip for “The Great Railway Bazaar” you were feeling guilty about leaving your wife and children behind. And you returned to find your wife was having an affair. That relationship ended. This time you write that your wife was much more supportive. I imagine that had an impact on your outlook and perspective on this trip.

Yes it did, because you need people to support you. You need people to be very positive about the trip and assume they’re going to be waiting for you, or they’re on your side. When you feel that you’re just slogging along alone feeling homesick, that’s terrible for travel. It’s hard for writing, too. But I think it makes a good story. “The Great Railway Bazaar” is an interesting book for the amount of trouble that it took to take the trip and then to endure this strange homecoming.

Also, I was thinking how older writers write different sorts of books. Take Evelyn Waugh, for example. When he was in his 50s he felt that he was an old man, and he wrote this book, A Tourist in Africa, where he more or less said I’m through with it, travel isn’t what it used to be, the going isn’t good anymore, I’m out of it. And then, still in his 50s, he wrote his autobiography. And then he died when he was around 60, 61. He wasn’t very old. Conrad was 68 when he died. D.H. Lawrence was 44 when he died. These are guys in their late 50s or 60s who took great trips in their earlier lives and then were very old men and out of it in their 60s. I don’t feel that way. Hemingway wrote brilliantly in his 20s and 30s and then still wrote brilliantly, but he was dead at 62 or 63. I’m 67. To me a guy who’s 62 is a young man. He’s not Papa Hemingway with a white beard. Hemingway didn’t really go back to Africa after he was in his 50s. He was done. It was over. It’s amazing when you compare the age. I’m glad that I’m healthy enough to take this sort of trip and I envision taking more. I feel as if I still have the mojo to keep doing it.

Does that mean we may see “The Old Patagonian Express” Redux at some point?

I don’t think so. This was an interesting one because it was the first trip, the longest one. No, I’d like to go to a new place, to places I’ve never been before, of which there are many.

Any places you have in mind?

Well, the Northern Hemisphere. I’ve never been to Scandinavia, I’ve never been to Greenland, I haven’t traveled in Canada, I’ve never been to Alaska. And plenty of other places. I’ve visited Brazil but I’ve never written about it.

You note in the new book that many of the great travel writers never embarked on a return trip, to retrace their steps. You were very aware that you were doing something many writers haven’t done. Did that present any new challenges for you in the way you wrote about the trip?

I had never written a travel book before when I wrote my first book, so I didn’t know what it would be. I know what a book is now, or I know what a book ought to be. And so I’ve learned a lot in that time. If you compare the two books, you’ll see that in the earlier book I wasn’t interested in politics. I might have mentioned the king of Afghanistan or the Shah of Iran, or something like that, but I never took much notice of political life. But I did in this book quite a lot. There’s a difference.

In the new book you write that “being invisible is the usual condition of the older traveler.” Do you find that you’re regarded differently in your travels now than you were, say, 35 years ago?

Oh sure, yeah. Older people are kind of invisible. It is a fact. The older you get, the less you’re taken any notice of. But it’s a great advantage to be invisible. It always has been for me as a writer. I didn’t know that older people were invisible when I was younger. Say an older man is talking to a woman. She actually doesn’t see him. When you’re young, you’re thinking, maybe she’s the one for me. And the woman’s thinking, maybe he’s the one for me. Maybe we can get it together. There’s a thought that runs through the mind of a younger person, it’s the DNA of it, it’s the mating instinct. With an older person, that doesn’t factor into it. An older person buys something, and the woman looks past him and doesn’t see anything. But you don’t know that until you’re older.

I found that interesting. I’m in my 30s and haven’t, I don’t think, experienced that yet.

It happens to everyone, it will happen to you in the fullness of time.

I’m sure it will. On the other hand, I’m not sure this will happen to me. While you may be more invisible because of your age, you’re better known than you were on your first journey. Were you recognized on this recent trip? Did that factor into things?

Uh, no—for various reasons. Not many people read. If I was Stephen King I’d probably be recognized. But I don’t think people stop him on the street and say, “I loved your latest book.” Writers don’t have faces. But I think that’s a good thing. I’m all for it. I would hate to be Harrison Ford, Laurence Fishburne, an identifiable person. I would find it very tiring, very wearying. They can’t come and go as they wish. That’s a tough thing.

Indeed, you met up with Haruki Murakami in Tokyo in the new book, and I enjoyed the pleasure you took in his invisibility in Tokyo. Even when the two of you were entering the Tokyo subway, which he wrote about so famously, nobody recognized him.

I thought that was really interesting. That’s a perfect example of it. He’s Japan’s most famous writer and no one knows what he looks like. That’s great, actually.

Our reviewer thought she detected more compassion and even admiration from you in the way you wrote about the people you encountered on this journey, more so than in previous books. And I thought I detected that, too. Do you think there’s anything to that? Do you see people differently than you did decades ago?

I think it’s possible. I don’t know whether I’d use the word compassion. More understanding, or attempting to understand things that I would have generalized or written off before. But I think that’s a factor of age. Maybe I’m less of a wise guy. I really don’t know. That’s something only the reader can judge. It’s hard for me to judge. But if you’re saying, do I take people more seriously? Maybe I do. When you’re young and you travel, you don’t compare your life with others’ lives. But when you’ve lived a little, you say, this person is my age but look how different his life has been. When you’re young, you say, my whole life is ahead of me.

This is another reason why it’s amazing and enjoyable to be an older writer. I’m sorry that the older writers of the past didn’t repeat their journeys. At my age, most writers were writing their autobiographies. Graham Greene started his autobiography when he was about my age. Evelyn Waugh wrote A Little Learning when he was about my age. So did Ford Maddox Ford. Conrad wrote a personal record when he was my age. The older writers of the past tended to say, I’m going to tidy up my affairs, sum up my life and then I don’t know, have a cup of tea and go to bed. But I really don’t feel that way. If someone said what do you want to do, I wouldn’t say I want to write my memoir. I’d say I’d like to go to Angola, I’d like to go back to the Congo. I don’t want to sit around saying I was born and this happened and talk about my childhood.

You wrote, “If a place, after decades, is the same, or worse, than before, it is almost shaming to behold.” And you found Romania to be a somewhat sad place. But what place were you most heartened by on this return trip?

Vietnam. The difference between Vietnam at war and in peacetime couldn’t be greater. The Soviet Union morphing into Russia is not that dramatic. Although there are huge changes, it was a place of great fear before. But I think that Vietnam—because we were there, we were fighting, we were dropping seven million tons of bombs on them, and millions of gallons of Agent Orange. We defoliated them, we killed them, we flattened them, and they crawled out from the wreckage and built, I think, a very viable country that we gave them no help with. In fact, up until ‘94 there was an embargo. We only tried to prevent them from developing. And yet they did. They managed without us, so there’s a hopeful thing. People can survive without American aid. If a people are true to their traditions and see themselves as a nation, they can survive and prosper. Certainly that happened in Vietnam.

In the past, you’ve talked about the importance of isolating oneself in one’s travels, making oneself difficult to reach. And the idea that followed from that was that the more one isolates oneself, the more rewarding or powerful the travel experience is. And yet this time you traveled with a BlackBerry, you stayed in contact with home. I’m curious how that changed your experience.

It did change it, to tell you the truth. When you have a BlackBerry you’re in touch. I could run my life, answer emails, log on and so forth. It’s a detriment, obviously. I don’t really want to be in touch. I tried to see the BlackBerry as a device for playing BrickBreaker, that video game like Pong where you break bricks and try to get a big score. I got up to 8,500 points and thought, OK, that’s the use of it. It came in very useful at certain times, I can’t deny that.

On the whole, though it was useful, I’d rather travel without it. But my wife was happier getting messages from me and the reassurance that I was all right. But I think disappearing is part of the job. It’s not to be recommended for everyone. But travel writing is not recommended for everyone. When I lived in Africa, I didn’t have a telephone and there was no internet. I wrote a letter home and they wrote a letter back, and it took six weeks to go back and forth. And that was a good thing. I learned the language as a result, I was immersed in a culture. There’s no refuge. You can’t hide. You’ve got to make friends and deal with people. Now, I suppose Peace Corps volunteers, when they’re having a tough time, call home, they get on the computer, and they sort of disappear and withdraw from the country, and I don’t think that’s great.

Do you think that since you wrote “The Great Railway Bazaar” the challenge for the travel writer has changed?

No, I think the challenge is what it’s always been, which is to make the reader see a place, experience a place, smell the place, hear the voices. It’s like the great challenge in fiction, which is to persuade the reader that he or she is there in the place and seeing it. It’s quite a big challenge, but that’s what it is. It’s to make the place palpable. You know when you’re reading something like that.

There’s a book that I loved, written in the ‘70s, called The Fearful Void by Geoffrey Moorhouse. He traveled across the Sahara on a camel with two Tuaregs, and it’s a thrilling story because he had such a terrible time. He didn’t succeed in crossing the Sahara. He only got halfway. But it’s a thrilling book. There’s always room for those books—someone attempting a difficult trip and then writing about it honestly and well.

The books I don’t have a lot of time for are the frivolous ones: lovable people in Tuscany, or a little treasure of a man in Spain, or wonderful meals. The books about having a great time. I’m not too interested in them. But there are plenty of them because people have the fantasy of ditching their job and going somewhere, saying, why don’t we go live in Italy, or Venezuela, or going to a Greek island, that used to be a big fantasy. These books with lots of sunshine and beaches, they have no interest for me. I did write a book about the Pacific that had a lot of sunshine and beaches, but they in were some dark places.

In that case—you’re referring to The Happy Isles of Oceania, of course—I recall that you wrote about your divorce, too, and that cast a shadow over your experience.

Yeah, I got divorced, and I found some of the people very hostile and territorial. No, I’ve never written about, “Wish you were here, having a great time.”

And you don’t seem to have a great interest in writing a travel book about Hawaii, where you spend part of every year.

It’s very hard to write about a place that you live in. I wrote a novel, Hotel Honolulu, and that’s about as far as I would go. I could write about Hawaii, but it’s a place I want to live in, and I’m still sort of learning about it.

That’s another thing about travel. You can go to a place and write about it, but the longer you live in a place the harder it is to write about. That’s why home is so difficult to write about.

You once wrote that “The challenge for the serious traveler in the age of globalization is to prove that the word ‘globalization’ is fairly meaningless.”

Oh yes. Where did I write that?

It was in the introduction to “The Best American Travel Writing” back in 2001. I liked that, because globalization is a phenomenon that every traveler confronts these days. We see KFCs and Starbucks everywhere. Can you talk about that, about proving that the word “globalization” is somewhat meaningless?

Well you know there’s a book by Thomas Friedman called The World is Flat, which says everything is accessible and people from Bangalore can come to New York and all that. I disagree, I think the world is round. It’s not only round, but it also has dark places. At the beginning of “Heart of Darkness,” Marlow says this has been one of the dark places of the earth, talking about England. England was once dark and neolithic. And then he talks about the Congo and how the Congo was a dark place. Well, the Congo is still a dark place.

A guy called Tim Butcher tried to retrace the footsteps of Stanley going through the Congo, and he couldn’t do it. He wrote a book, it’s called Blood River, I think it just came out, and he proved that the Congo is more difficult to travel in than at the time of Stanley, or he’s not the match of Stanley. Stanley took almost three years to go across the Congo. Butcher took six weeks or something.

You could say, how globalized is that? Well, not very globalized in my opinion. If you’re going to a place like the Congo, which is completely out of touch, it’s not connected, there’s no road, no government, just child soldiers or rebel soldiers ripping you off, that’s pretty tough. How flat is that world? There are places in Brazil, India. Name a country. China. Xinjiang in China. You can talk about how modern China is, and the Olympics and so forth. But eastern China: some of those people don’t consider themselves to be even Chinese. Well they’re not. They’re the Uyghur people, and they’re Muslims. They want to be in a country called East Turkestan. And they object to Chinese domination.

The world is only globalized to a small extant. People come to the United States, for example. They go to New York and say, Oh, I was in Paris yesterday and now I’m in New York, and it’s so much the same. Well, you have to say to those people, go to eastern Oklahoma, go to the Ozarks, go to North Dakota. Yes, New York may seem flat and globalized, but Fargo isn’t. Billings, Montana, isn’t. There are places that don’t have names, that are off the map. It’s presumptuous to assume that we’re all connected. There are people who have gotten nothing out of globalization. Their lives are only getting worse. They’re more neglected. But those are the places that are worth going to, I think.

And yet, as a travel writer and editor, I like to think that one needn’t go to the Congo to write about the world in an interesting way, and that there are places in New York or Los Angeles that are equally interesting and perhaps even untouched to some degree by globalization.

I don’t disagree with you. In fact, I completely agree with you. But I think that you need a method. The United States can’t be written about like other countries. It should be written about. And there are plenty of places in the States that are never written about. Somewhere in the book—I think I was in India—I talked about how accessible India is. India possesses the accessible poor. You can go up to an Indian and ask how much he makes and meet his family, and the accessibility of people way down on the totem pole allows you to write about them. You can’t do that in the States. You can’t go to a small town in the heartland and write about them as though they were tribal people in Asad. You can’t do it.

My youngest son made a documentary in Jackson, Mississippi. I really admire him for it because I don’t know anyone who’s made a documentary or written a book about Jackson, Mississippi, particularly the inner city, the dangerous part of Jackson. You hear about Jackson—it’s the capital and everything’s fine. It’s not all fine. It’s dangerous and difficult and no one writes about it. I’d like to write that book, but I don’t know how to do it. I’d love to write a book about the States; I wouldn’t know how to approach it. But I agree with you when you say, You don’t have to go to the Congo. I totally agree. You should be able to write about anywhere. In fact, people do. But that’s why the travel book is an amorphous thing. No one knows what it is or what it stands for.

There’s a famous 18th-century book called A Journey Around My Room by Xavier de Maistre. There’s actually an edition with an introduction by D.H. Lawrence. You can write that. Thoreau wrote a book about his hometown. It’s a great book. He considered Concord, Massachusetts, the equivalent of Brazil. He even said when a man wrote a book about the Arctic that every observation made in that book about the Arctic could be made about Concord. It’s not true, but that’s what he thought. I’d like that to be the case.

A book that impressed me is Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. I wish I’d thought of that.  I really do. Of getting low-paying jobs and just traveling around the States and finding out how people live. It’s not a travel book, but it’s a book about America that penetrates it.

It seems that every other month some writer is declaring the death of travel writing. Do you read much travel writing these days? Do you read much of what is being published?

I don’t. I read books by my friends. Now and then if a book comes along that’s a real ordeal, I read it. I’m not looking for a well-written book. I’m looking for a book about something that appeals to me, an ordeal appeals to me, a place I’ve never been that’s written about in a penetrating way. I’m not looking for someone just joyriding or a stunt, someone riding a bicycle somewhere or whatever it is. But people used to talk about the death of the novel. That’s a kind of normal reaction to too much of something. But there will always be travel books, as long as there are places to go.

That sounds like a great place to end. Thanks very much.

Jim Benning is the coeditor of World Hum.

Photo by Yingyong Un-Anongrak.

When a curiously titled book called “The Sex Lives of Cannibals” quietly appeared on bookshop shelves in 2004, little did we know that the author, one J. Maarten Troost, would pen some of the most memorable and laugh-out-loud travel prose since Bill Bryson began jotting down his travel experiences. In his book, Troost managed to turn his account of being stuck on a tiny, relatively cultureless, and inactive island into a rollicking read.

Two years later, Troost gave a repeat performance with “Getting Stoned with Savages,” where he, once again, followed his wife to a tiny island nation (in this case Vanuatu and Fiji) and soon found himself knee-deep in hijinks and misadventure. In Troost’s third and most recent tome, he changes gears, taking on China. Though he rarely strays off the beaten path in Lost on Planet China, Troost’s keen eye for the absurd has become even sharper. The result is one of the year’s best travel books. David Farley caught up with Troost via email to discuss China on the eve of the Olympic Games.

World Hum: After writing about island nations in your previous two books, what inspired you to take on a beast like China for your next book?

J. Maarten Troost: In retrospect, I had no idea what I was in for when I set out to do a book about China. I was simply curious. I’d been living in the far periphery of the world for so long that these tidbits of news you now and then hear about China—Lenovo buying IBM, for instance, or the fact that there are more than a hundred billionaires in China—seemed all the more startling. And as I began to read more, it seemed clear that if you’re going to understand this world, you need to understand China. Plus, I like a little dissonance in my life, and nothing is more dissonant than moving from the world’s smallest nations to its largest.

The writing in the book flows smoothly between personal narrative and historical backstory, and you do a particularly fine job of exploring aspects of China’s history while still maintaining your entertaining voice. What kind of research did you do to prepare for the trip and for writing the book?

I read. I Googled. I spoke with everyone I knew who had been to China. But nothing really prepares you for modern China, and so I traveled in a state of saucer-eyed wonder. It was only later, once I settled on the basic structure of the book, that I was able to think through all the issues one confronts with China.

A British friend of mine told me she recently watched a TV show on America’s foreign policy over the last 50 years. The show’s conclusion had a rather surprising twist: if you don’t agree with what the United States has done in the world, just wait until China rules the planet; you’ll be yearning for the good old days of the American empire again. What are your thoughts about the idea that the Chinese will own the 21st century? Are you frightened?

The Chinese regard the past two hundred years, when Europe humbled it with its drug trade and Japan bloodied it with its war, as a historical aberration, a traumatic anomaly. They see the 21st century as their moment to return China to its rightful place among nations—the top. But they are not looking to dominate the world with any kind of ideology. Their model, as far as I could tell, begins and ends with economic growth, and they are as willing to trade with a democracy like Norway as they are with a cruel, authoritarian regime like Sudan’s. The challenge for the rest of the world is how to accommodate China, and in particular, how to respond to the ferocious demand for resources that China’s growth demands. The American way of life, for instance, is predicated on cheap oil. The rise of China ensures the end of cheap oil. So now what?

And correspondingly, how does a world on the cusp of climate change deal with the catastrophic levels of pollution emitted by a surging China? Already today, roughly one-third of all the air pollution found in California originates in China. Those are the kind of issues, I think, that will define China’s relationship with the world during the 21st century.

Throughout your travels in China, people kept telling you—almost warning you—that it’s necessary to look at the country and its customs in the “Chinese context.” Was there a moment when this context came into focus and you could understand things that seem absurd to those of us who haven’t had the privilege of seeing China in the “Chinese context”?

When I first arrived, I wasn’t exactly feeling the love for China. The pollution was apocalyptic. The presence of hideously disfigured children begging on the streets suggested a cruel society. And for all the vaunted economic reforms, this new China seemed to encourage a kind of Darwinism—the strong prosper, the weak are crushed. And yet, after months of traveling, I came to appreciate China, to admire it even, for all that it had accomplished. This is because once you are there, once you are able to live and breathe the history of China, you can contextualize your observations. I felt this most profoundly at the end of my trip near the North Korean border. There across the Yalu River lay North Korea, a brutal totalitarian dictatorship that could not even offer electricity to its citizens. That was China thirty years ago. And today, on the Chinese side of the border, there is light and energy and opportunities. It’s an extraordinary transformation.

What was the most surprising thing you discovered about China?

I was overwhelmed by the pollution, which was surprising, really. I had, of course, known that China was polluted. At no time did I expect my wanderings to be accompanied by crisp, blue skies. And yet, I was utterly unprepared for the environmental catastrophe that is China. From Beijing to Lanzhou and on to Guangzhou and Chongqing, most of China resides in a swirling haze of coal and particulate matter that every year kills more than 700,000 people. One-third of all the freshwater in China is considered unsafe for industrial use, never mind drinking. For all the whiz-bang flash of contemporary China, I think the environment is where the country hits a brick wall.

Given the gross amounts of pollution that you just mentioned, as well as the Chinese philosophy that they’ll “eat anything with four legs except for a table,” would you rather be a long-distance runner at the Beijing Olympics or a contestant in an eating competition in China?

Bring on the Reptile Sampler Platter.

You mentioned in the book that when you were going through customs, you feared they weren’t going to let you in because you’d been critical of China in “The Sex Lives of Cannibals.” In “Lost on Planet China,” you seem to have been shocked and awed into respecting the country, while at the same time you’re also quite critical. Do you think you’ll ever be able to go back?

I don’t know. On the one hand, China has a way of making you feel small and insignificant. The observations of some writer are nothing compared to the larger story of China. On the other hand, China can be a trifle sensitive to how it’s portrayed to the outside world. I suspect I’d be allowed back in. I hope so.

Some people boycott traveling in China because of the Chinese government’s less-than-savory policies—such as their proclivity for killing citizens for what seems to us like minor infractions. What do you think about that ethical debate? Do you think traveling there is a better approach?

I’ve never believed in abstaining from traveling to a country for political or moral reasons. We’re human beings before we are citizens, and while you may find a government unappealing, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with seeing what your fellow human beings are up to in some other corner of Earth. But, of course, these days it’s easy to turn the question around. I live in an area that sees quite a few tourists. Over the past year I’ve noticed a lot of Chinese visitors. Perhaps they object to the Iraq War? Or the U.S. government’s detainment of foreigners in Guantanamo Bay? Or you could go on and on, but I for one, am happy they’ve decided to visit despite their concerns about the U.S. government.

Your chapters on Tibet were some of my favorite parts of the book. After being there, do you have any hope that Tibet won’t be completely decimated a generation from now?

I have little hope for Tibet. I think the railroad to Lhasa is the beginning of the end. Suddenly, Tibet is accessible, and by the tens of thousands the Han Chinese are moving in. Tibet will be crushed by the demographics of China. And the Han Chinese, by and large, do not have soft and fuzzy feelings for the Tibetans. Many regard Tibetans as a primitive tribe with a backward religion. Indeed, they largely resent Tibetans for their ingratitude towards China. From the Han perspective, China has brought money, development, economic progress and so forth to this poorest corner of the country, and the Tibetans have yet to say thank you. So combine the sheer number of Han Chinese with an undercurrent of resentment that flows both ways, and things don’t look so good for Tibet.

What parts of China would you go back to? And where would you not want to go back to?

I would like to return one day to Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces in the Southwest, as well as to Xinjiang Province in the far West. If I never have to spend another day in a Chinese megacity, I’ll be happy.

Do you have any plans for your next book yet?

India, baby.

David Farley is a contributing editor of World Hum. He recently interviewed writer Tony Perrottet for the site.

There are few childhood memories as distinct as those of family road trips. In her new book “Are We There Yet? The Golden Age of American Family Vacations,” Susan Sessions Rugh explains how the prosperous period between the end of World War II and the gas crisis of the 1970s gave Americans the unprecedented opportunity to see the country by car. What’s more, she uses the subject as a vehicle to explore American social norms and racial tensions of the time. I recently chatted with the Brigham Young University professor about the rise—and fall—of the American family vacation.

World Hum: What was the driving force behind the “Golden Age” of the American family vacation?

Susan Sessions Rugh: Certainly post-war prosperity. People had money to buy cars and money to spend on vacations. Part of that prosperity included the two-week vacation benefit that was available to more than half the population. There was also the construction of interstate highways and more roads. The travel industry got into gear at that time and states promoted themselves as tourist destinations quite vigorously. Then there was of course the baby boom, which caused changes in the family: All those children needed to be entertained in the summer.

You talk about the Cold War-era family vacation as a symbol of American strength and proof of “American-ness.” Can you think of any other country that has developed a similar sort of patriotic tourism?

There was a movement after World War II in Italy promoting Italian patriotism through tourism. But I think America is unique in this kind of tourism. No other country is as large, no other country is so self-conscious about democracy.

Why were families so focused on patriotic tourism that educated children about the country’s history?

My sense is that the veterans had just fought this war for the country and Washington was seen as the democratic capital of the world. Taking children to Washington, to Mt. Vernon, to the war sights, taking them to Lincoln sites, was all part of the patriotism. There was a feeling that this was your country and you should be educated about it.

Your book sheds light on the gender roles that came into play in family vacations. Women packed, cooked, kept the children clean and organized the campers and tents upon arrival; men kept the car in good condition for traveling. Do you think the gender roles have really changed much in family vacations today?

That’s why family vacations are such a great way to look at a family. I think women are more involved in the planning, but it does still seem to hold true that women do the packing. But when I had my own feminist awakening, I started insisting that I drive more. Today women are taking the wheel more often, which is an indication that they have more control. And with women bringing a second income to the household, they have more say and more control in where they go [on vacation].

You dedicate a chapter to the difficulties black families had while traveling. You also say that “outside the South, most whites were probably oblivious to the fact that they were traveling within racially segregated spaces because whiteness was the norm.” Do you remember encountering racial segregation while traveling?

I never traveled in the South and I don’t really remember seeing segregation. But I think it usually wasn’t visible to white Americans. When I would bring up the subject while talking to people for the book, they would say, “Oh, blacks vacationed?” But it’s of course hard to tell how many whites knew about it or if they can be blamed for being complicit [in the segregation on the road]. But of course they vacationed—many black families were in the middle class and had the money to vacation. They were the ones who really began opposing Jim Crow. It seemed to be almost heroic—they seemed to be undaunted. They refused to accede to the segregation. I began to see them as pioneers.

When did the Civil Rights Act of 1965 actually begin changing travel conditions for black Americans?

In the South, some of the establishments immediately challenged the law. Certainly in the South, I’m sure it took at least another decade. Given the ability to boycott, corporate hotel chains very quickly observed the law. But I’m sure there’s still segregation in some places today.

You also mentioned that Jews set up their own establishments in the Catskills to avoid discrimination. Did other ethnic or religious groups have similar problems with segregation?

It’s too soon to tell. Asians really didn’t start migrating here until the 1960s, unless you’re talking about the Chinese in California, which is really such a limited group. In my research, I’ve not been able to find much about Latino travel. That’s research that really needs to be done.

On a recent trip to the American Southwest, I couldn’t help but notice the droves of European families and couples—Germans, in particular—around the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon and Monument Valley. Why is the American “Western adventure” seemingly the great choice for the modern European family vacation? Does it have to do with Karl May’s cowboy literature?

It is partly from his books. And the Utah Office of Tourism markets the American West to Europeans, especially Germans—they always have marketed to Germany. Twenty-five percent of all foreign visitors who come through are German. But I think there’s the appeal of the “mythic West” and the struggle of cowboys and Indians. It symbolizes America, with the wide open spaces and national parks. It’s so different from Europe. They’ve never seen anything like our national parks.

What do you think the “ideal” for a family vacation is today?

I think in many ways the ideal is still the road trip. But vacations today are more frequent and they’re shorter. It used to be one vacation for two weeks. Now people take more vacations. They’re shorter and airline use is more frequent. 

How have family vacations changed as families themselves have changed?

It seems to me that taking a family vacation defines you as a family. They are just as, if not more important, to single parent families and gay and lesbian families as they are to the traditional family. They may not have the income to go as often, but still find it very important to travel. What I do think has changed is the inclusion of grandparents. Especially in the Latino cultures, three-generation family vacations are very common. The travel industry is changing to accommodate it—the whole cruise industry targets multi-generation vacations. So does Disney World.

How do you think rising gas prices will affect family vacations? What will families do to still enjoy vacations without spending half their budget on gas?

I think people won’t go as far and they may stay with relatives to cut costs—they won’t splurge as much. They may trim food costs by taking food along. I think the family vacation is too strong a tradition for it to die because of gas prices.

In the book, you mention the comedy of family vacations—how stressed out people can get when they’re trying to relax. So why do people keep going on vacations if they’re such a hassle?

I think it’s an ideal and we have trouble acclimating to the reality. There’s this hope that the vacation is going to solve all the family’s problems, which it obviously won’t. Everyone remembers the sibling fights in the back seat. What’s important is not always that the vacation will be happy but that it will be memorable.

Why did the “Golden Age” end?

It had to do with the gas crisis. People were waiting in long lines trying to get gas so it was harder to travel. The post-war prosperity also came to an end in the 1970s. The travel industry turned away from family vacations and leaned toward niche marketing. It was selling more getaways for couples. The idea of a family as the ideal was really fading.

But many families still take trips together regularly. Could we be encountering a rebirth of the “Golden Age”?

I feel we’re seeing a resurgence in family travel, especially after September 11. There’s a lot of family imagery being used to sell the vacations and to advertise hotel chains. I think in some ways we’re harking back to what it used to be. I’d say the family vacation is different: different because of the shorter vacations, gender roles, and electronics games, but it’s the same idea.

Elyse Franko is World Hum’s intern.

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‘Whenever someone implies that history is boring, I bring up Napoleon’s penis,” writes Tony Perrottet in his new book, Napoleon’s Privates: 2,500 Years of History Unzipped. Having followed the trail of ancient Roman travelers in Pagan Holiday and traced the history of the Olympic Games in The Naked Olympics, Perrottet has turned his attention to the history of Napoleon’s “baguette”—how it wound up in New Jersey, for example—as well as other lesser-known sexually-tainted oddities of history. Ever wanted to know about the nighttime habits of Renaissance-era lesbian nuns, the medieval Church’s curious sex laws or the theories behind Hitler’s one testicle? Tony Perrottet is your man. David Farley caught up with the Australian-born author/travel writer—and World Hum contributor—at the newly reopened International Bar in New York City for a few pints of beer and some talk about famous penis relics.

World Hum: Your previous books—“Pagan Holiday” and “The Naked Olympics”—were personal travel narratives interweaved with history. Your newest book is just the history. What were the challenges in writing this book?

Tony Perrottet: I’ve never been interested in just pure history—it’s always about how it relates to the present. What I did with this book was find stories that would not only get people’s attention, but stories that are embedded in how we think and what we think about today; the same type of things we sit around talking about in bars or at dinner parties: sex, celebrity, food, real estate, scandal. In a way, going back in to the past is the same as a travel writer going to a foreign country. In fact, my history writing is like traveling in the past. The novelist L.P. Hartley’s famous phrase—the past is a foreign country—is true. I want to know what 18th-century Paris looked like, sounded like and smelled like. Historians don’t always fill in all these gaps.

Maybe that’s why history can appear so dry to some of us—because it often lacks the juicy details that you include in your writing.

Yes. It’s true. People hate history. Even the History Chanel isn’t showing history anymore. But history is very interesting. Look at the history of Napoleon’s penis. Fascinating stuff. People don’t even realize they’re learning about the battle of Waterloo, his marriage to Josephine, why he was exiled to St. Helena.

Speaking of which, in your book, you recount the travels of Napoleon’s penis. Can you give us some of the highlights?

It was removed during the autopsy by his vengeful doctor in 1821 who gave it to a priest in Corsica. That priest died in a blood vendetta a few years later. His family kept it until 1916 when a British collector got a hold of it. It briefly went on display in New York City in 1927 where a Time magazine article noted there was a lot of weeping and giggling among the spectators. In 1969 it went on auction in London but didn’t sell. It went back on auction in Paris in 1977 and was bought by John Kingsley Lattimer, one of the world’s leading urologists, who took it home to New Jersey and stored it under his bed for 30 years.

How did you first hear about Napoleon’s penis and what happened when you first contacted John Kingsley Lattimer about it?

I’ve always been interested in morbid celebrity relics. I was actually doing a piece for Smithsonian on Little Big Horn and was trying to find out about the idea that the Dakota had chopped off the genitals of Custer’s men. So I Googled “severed genitals” and Napoleon’s penis came up. It has quite an online presence. Lattimer is a pretty famous character himself—his collection of curiosities is legendary. So I got in touch with him and went out to New Jersey to have a look at his stuff. He wouldn’t show me the penis, claiming he didn’t know where it was in his curiosity-packed house. I asked on more than one occasion if I could see it, and he’d go on and on about why he didn’t want to show it. But after he died last year, his daughter—who inherited the penis—unexpectedly showed me one day a few months ago.

Where might one find other famous historical penises?

Rasputin’s penis is on display in St. Petersburg. It’s supposed to be 11 inches long or something like that. Most likely, however, it’s not authentic. Tutankhamen’s penis is an interesting case, too. When they did X-rays of Tut’s body in the ‘60s, they discovered the penis was missing and they pointed the finger at the photographers who helped unwrap the mummy in 1922. And then a couple years ago, Zahi Hawass, the head of the antiquities department in Cairo, claimed to have found the penis. John Dillinger’s was supposed to be in the Smithsonian in Washington, but sadly that turned out to be an urban myth. And then, of course, there’s Jesus’ foreskin, but you’re keeping its location a closely guarded secret.

Indeed. At least for now. In a way, one could use “Napoleon’s Privates” as a guidebook to historical sex tourism. If you were going around, say, Europe, what would be the perfect two-week Tony Perrottet itinerary? Give us the highlight tour.

You’d have to start in Naples in the “Secret Cabinet” in the Museum of Archaeology. The cabinet was set up in 1819 when they found a bunch of erotic Roman stuff from Pompeii. The king of Naples was so horrified when he saw the phallic wind chimes, huge penis sculptures, and images of Europa getting raped, he ordered everything into a secret cabinet. Which of course then became a major stop for the 19th-century Grand Tourists. After Naples, you’d have to go to Florence where at the Museum of Science is Galileo’s finger. From there, head to Venice to gawk at old nunneries where travelers would rent rooms and rent one of the ladies for the night, too. Finally, In St. Andrew’s College, north of Edinburgh, you could have found a wig made of the pubic hairs of the mistresses of King Charles II. Sadly, the wig was stolen. Today, you can see the stand that held the wig, though.

Do you think the rest of us will ever get a chance to see Napoleon’s penis?

It depends who buys it. Maybe they’ll make postcards of it or put it on the internet or on display in a museum. It hard to tell what the future holds for the emperor’s manhood.

David Farley is a contributing editor of World Hum. His book about the quest to find the holy foreskin is due out next year.

There are few journeys more famous, and less taken, than the journey up the Congo River. In Bryan Mealer’s new book, All Things Must Fight To Live: Stories of War and Deliverance in Congo, he spends five weeks making the 1,077-mile journey on barges with the traders who are reviving commerce on the river now that the Second Congo War is mostly over. Mealer had covered the war for three years for the Associated Press, and when it ended, he decided he finally wanted to see the heart of the country he had been writing about. I spoke with the former Esquire editor and current Harper’s contributor by phone about the river, rough travel and how Congo changes those who know it.

World Hum: What is the current political situation in Congo?

Bryan Mealer: Now it seems pretty static. The government did a peace deal with this renegade soldier, Laurent Nkunda, at the end of January or early February and it seems to be kind of holding. But as is the nature of these things in that country, now there are separatists who want to turn Congo back into the Congo Kingdom. So if it’s not one thing, it’s another.

I really liked the first part of your book, about the war. But I wanted to ask you about the second section, the trip up the Congo River. It’s not a trip many non-Congolese make, is it?

I think a lot of journalists and travelers have made that trip before. It’s a classic “Heart of Darkness” journey from Kinshasa to Kisangani. It’s 1,700 kilometers, and it can take five weeks. It can take six weeks. It used to be, you could do it in two weeks, when the river was dredged, and you had a nice boat you could sleep on. But with the war, it just became kind of suicide. There were so many rebel groups moving to the jungles, and they used the river to transport themselves, their weapons and their men. It was pretty dangerous. But with the elections, it’s more possible now. There’s even a tour group called Go Congo Tours. And they’re offering pretty decent trips at a decent price, too.

How was it to travel in the footsteps of Joseph Conrad?

You know, I try to make it a point with Congo to try to move past the “Heart of Darkness” references. It’s so easy, you know, an instant association. And while I think I had an easier time going up the road [around Livingstone Falls] than Conrad did—I didn’t see the bodies chained to poles, or the skeletons on the road—it’s a really hard trip. It’s really hard, man. I guess it’s as hard as you want to make it. The first leg of my trip I took in kind of luxury with this Frenchman, but I felt that I wasn’t getting a real experience of the river. The whole point of it was to see how the Congolese travel. There are no roads there, and airfare is so out of reach for most people. The river is the only way to get across the country and through the jungle. The way people have to travel is really kind of perilous. They have to go on barges that have no timetables, with overcrowded and terrible conditions, and sometimes they sink. But I just wanted to see how you got across the country. And it is tough.

When you were working for AP, you saw things from above, flying in and out. Did your travels on the ground change the way you saw the country?

The whole reason I did the trip was that after the elections, I was in a pretty ebullient mood. I covered the elections from my old haunts where there was all that blood. And to see the election happen in that place really did something to me. For the first time, I was leaving eastern Congo without this heavy dread in my gut. I was just so sick of that shit. I covered the war for three years. That’s all I’ve ever covered when I worked for AP—that’s all there was time to do. I could’ve gone looking for more hopeful stories, but there just wasn’t time. So I needed to go out and find that little bit of reprieve I saw on election day. I said, “OK, I’m going to go out and travel on the river.” I didn’t want my legacy to that place to be just a bunch of stories about dead people.

You said you went on the train journey to remember what you loved about the Congo. What was it that you loved?

I do love the Congo. It’s one of those great places. It’s just so full of stories that aren’t being told. I think for a writer, that place is so fertile. There’s so much tragedy, and you have those stories. But also in terms of a traveler, just doing these raw journeys. There are no postcard stands in these places. You are alone, and that feeling is really heavy when you’re in the jungle. When I got out of there, I felt that I’d really accomplished something, though at the same time, I wasn’t really sure what I’d accomplished.

Not many Westerners go through that part of the world. You have to be able to tolerate a lot of disruption.

Yeah, I’ve never backpacked through Europe or been to India or paddled down a river in China. So I just sort of flung myself into one of the hardest trips you could ever take. It was fun, but, man, was it hard. 

After your time in Congo, you think you’ll ever see the world the same again?

No, not at all. Congo’s changed everything in my life. Just having seen how low a society can get, and how low we can let a society get, everything is going to look better. But the Congolese are an incredibly resilient people. They can suffer and suffer and suffer and still sing songs when they go down the road. And that, more than anything, has taught me something. If these people can survive it, I can certainly survive it.

Frank Bures is a World Hum contributing editor. He recently wrote about the Geography of Bliss and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, and interviewed Will Self.

Kim Sunée was 3 years old when her mother left her in a busy South Korean marketplace in 1973 and promised to return. Police found Sunée there three days later, clutching a fistful of crumbs, still waiting. This mysterious separation continued to unsettle Sunée (pronounced Soo-NAY) well after she was adopted by an American family in New Orleans and grew up to be a worldly, well-traveled poet. 

Her longing for grounding manifested itself in hunger, both physical and spiritual. Food gave her a way to express herself and connect with others. As a child in Louisiana, she made gumbo and spicy crayfish bisque with her beloved grandfather, who would sometimes wear a great aunt’s wig and talk in a Julia Child falsetto while cooking. In her 20s, she lived in Nice, Stockholm, Provence, Paris and French Guiana and fell in love with the much-older Olivier Baussan, the founder of L’Occitane, the line of natural cosmetics and soaps. They lived together in France, hunting for buried truffles and eating local delights like wild peaches and lemon verbena poached in Lillet Blanc.

After five years, Sunée left Baussan and eventually returned to the United States. She now lives in Birmingham, Alabama, and works as the food editor of Cottage Living. Her travel memoir, Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love and the Search for Home, was released earlier this year to widespread attention. A Korean edition of the book just came out, and a Korean documentary filmmaker has chronicled her search for her birth family. She recently returned from an emotional trip to South Korea. I talked to Sunée about her book and how travel powered her search for home.

World Hum: Your story pivots on the search for home, and it takes you through many passages—South Korea, New Orleans, Sweden, France, China and French Guiana, for instance. It sounds like France was the most comfortable place for you. Why?

Kim Sunée: Perhaps because I’ve spent the most time there and forged relationships that have contributed to my sense of home. I also had a kitchen in France and not really in any of the other countries. But at different moments, I felt comfortable in the other places, as well, but these moments mostly seem related to food—eating a bowl of fragrant noodles at the open market in Cacao, French Guiana, or sucking the head of spicy crawfish in Louisiana.

Is home still an elusive concept? Or do you feel most at home when you’re traveling?

I do feel very much at home when I’m traveling. It’s an odd concept for some, but I truly am most alive when I’m off to another destination. There’s the glass-half-full versus glass-half-empty view of the world—mine is the suitcase always half-packed. I’m also coming to understand that sometimes we need travel in order to better come home. And home is really within ourselves—our sense of self. If we can understand that, then we can really take “home” with us wherever we go in the world.

How did the exploration of local cuisine—like that sensuous wild peach dessert—help ground you in the countries where you were living or visiting?

I think the title “Trail of Crumbs” illustrates this in some part. I think we can find our way home (as elusive or concrete as the idea may be) through food—those taste memories of our lives. And the sharing of these foods and the gifts of the table. I love the recipe for that dish you mention. It’s the first one in the book—wild peaches poached in Lillet blanc with fresh lemon verbena. The name of the recipe alone evokes an entire season for me and everything that happened that time of year at that particular place. But it wouldn’t mean as much had I made the peaches for myself and never shared them with anyone.

You told The New York Times, “Some people travel to see monuments. I travel to eat.” I loved that. Do you believe exploring a country’s cuisine helps you understand its culture?

I want to clarify that monuments, of course, are not to be dismissed, but a country’s cuisine is truly an entry point into the people and the culture and the history of the place. How and where we forage and then cook and share the food—something that occupies much of our day—is so indicative of who we are. There are culinary historians who can express this much better than I can—it’s just my passion and curiosity and guide when I travel.

It’s not that I want to eat only the “bizarre-est” foods when exploring a new country, but I do want to shop with a local, and go into someone’s kitchen, or share a meal with them at their neighborhood joint. That satisfies my hunger for the world more than snapping a few pictures of a monument.

You clearly felt like an outsider in the countries you visited. Did that perspective help you examine parts of the culture that insiders bypass?

I think so. Being a stranger in a strange land really does heighten the senses, makes us much more aware of our surroundings. In my 20s (and in my book), I explored the pain of not fitting in, but now I also understand that as a traveler, the “not fitting in” may be the most valuable travel companion.

You visited South Korea with Olivier in your 20s and recounted the trip in your book. But those scenes were full of tension and dissonance, as if you felt most like a foreigner there.

I really did. And I was. I think it was because I was so ill-prepared for the journey back to my birth country. I had no contacts, no one to show us around or decipher and explain my adoption papers, etc. It’s the first and only time I’ve traveled with a sense of fear.

Your book made me wonder if there’s a relationship between wanderlust and an unresolved identity—or at least an unresolved sense of home. Do you see such a connection?

This is a very interesting question and, for me, an obsession, so much so that it is a central theme in my memoir. The idea of identity is as elusive as the idea of home, so they are related. Wanderlust is sometimes a more lyrical way of expressing that we don’t know where we really belong in the world, what is our place, and our contribution. For me, home and wanderlust and, even to an extent, this idea of identity are also linked to love, and the hunger and search for it.

Where have you traveled in recent years? What have you savored there? And what countries would you still like to visit?

When I returned from living in Europe, I came back to the South of the United States and have traveled all over the region and the country. I had to go around the world to come back where I started and, in a sense, to rediscover the bounty of this part of the world.

As for other travels, I always go back to France several times a year—because I have family there—my goddaughter and her parents and other friends. I was in Tuscany recently and although I’ve been to Italy many, many times, this past trip was so inspiring, mainly because of the people I met and the food—agretti, the freshest, sweetest ricotta ever, and Sicilian almond granita. I love Mexico but do not know it well enough. I haven’t been to Greece in years, but I’d love to go back. I want to go to so many places. Tanzania, Turkey, Morocco, Québec. I want to go to Croatia, and I’m just dying to get to Thailand and Singapore and back to Hong Kong.

In mid-May you returned from a trip to South Korea where you searched for your birth family. Did you find out anything about them? How did this trip back “home” feel compared to the uncomfortable one in your 20s? Could this journey inspire another book?

I am still overwhelmed by the generosity and hospitality of the Koreans. Seoul is a vibrant, bustling city, yet there remains a deep respect for tradition. The journey was rich. First, my Korean publisher, Minumsa, published the Korean-language edition of “Trail of Crumbs.” So there were press conferences and interviews and TV appearances.

Also, Hongseok Ro, a documentary filmmaker, filmed my return journey—we even went back to the market where I may have been abandoned and to the Star of the Sea Orphanage. The documentary aired in Korea, and it’s also on my website. I’ve also posted some of the delicious—and not so delicious, such as boiled silkworm—food I tasted on the blog portion of my site. I was lucky to be in Korea during fresh crab season. The crab is preserved in a soy bean paste sauce and you just squeeze it into your mouth and suck out the raw crab jelly—it’s absolutely addictive. I also loved the preserved quince tea, fresh spring radish kimchi, “bachelor kimchi,” flying pasta soup and “swimming cow” soup.

The birth-family search—which I didn’t realize I was going to be doing until I got there—was emotionally exhausting. I don’t want to divulge too much about the search, but there’s more than enough for a second book. At one point, another Korean American adoptee poet (who was also searching at the time) and I joked that it was “CSI: Seoul”—between DNA testing and several “brotherly candidates.” The crime: missing or lost children—a whole generation of divided families. And just when you think you’ve found a clue to your past, it’s erased by another theory.

But I do feel like I accomplished what I had hoped in returning to my birth country—to return fearless and with a stronger sense of self.

Joanna Kakissis is a freelance writer based in Athens, Greece, and a contributor to the World Hum blog. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post.

Tony Horwitz’s travel books have led him into the deep South, around the blue Pacific and, most recently, on a series of treks around the United States to rediscover over a century’s worth of history that Americans have all but forgotten. Children in the U.S. are taught about the arrival of Columbus in 1492 and the English settlers in 1620. But who explored the so-called New World in the years between? What happened?

Inspired by a conversation with a park ranger during a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, Horwitz decided to find out with a research trip around the United States. As he writes, he wanted to answer the questions, “What would it be like to explore this New World, not only in books but on the ground? To take a pre-Pilgrimage through early America that ended at Plymouth Rock instead of beginning there?” I caught up with him via email to tease out a little more about the fascinating stories in A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World.

World Hum: Which of the explorers did you know the least about when you started writing the book? Whose story fascinated you the most?

Tony Horwitz: I knew almost nothing about any of these explorers, and that was the impetus for writing the book. As I dived in, I also discovered that the little I thought I knew—about Columbus, say, or John Smith—was 90 percent myth.  If I had to pick one story that was particularly fascinating, it would be the incredible trek made by four castaways from a Spanish expedition to Florida in the 1520s. They became faith healers to the Indians who took them in, were passed from tribe to tribe as revered medicine men and, over the course of eight years, wandered west to the Gulf of California and then south into Spanish-held Mexico. In other words, they crossed the entire continent 270 years before Lewis and Clark. One of them was a black slave named Estevanico, and another a Spaniard, Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, who wrote a stirring account of the journey that reads a bit like the first great American road trip.

What did you discover about the country (parts of which you say you hadn’t visited before) in retracing the land routes of conquistadors?

We think of ourselves as a young country, the New World, but traveling America in the wake of early explorers made me realize that we’re a lot older than we think. This is most vivid in the Southwest, where you encounter ancient pueblo cultures alongside Spanish communities that trace their roots to the 16th century, before Jamestown or Plymouth. Also, though I’d often traveled through the South, I’d done so searching for traces of the Civil War. This time I discovered the rich remains of the Indian “mound culture” that existed for centuries before Europeans arrived. The engineering and art of these societies rivaled that of the much better known civilizations of Mexico and Peru.

Were there any particularly powerful moments or stops you made in Arizona or New Mexico that reinforced this sense of history?

Yes, a stone headland in New Mexico called El Morro. For centuries, the bluff offered shade and water to travelers on the long dry trail between Zuni and the Rio Grande, and many of them left inscriptions on the cliff-face: pre-Columbian Indians, Spanish conquistadors, missionaries, railroad surveyors, even members of a camel caravan. El Morro is now a national monument and you can still see the carvings, which cover almost an acre of rock. To me, it’s a vivid reminder of how rich and varied and ancient the Southwest’s history is.

Why do you think it’s important to visit places where, in your words, history happened?

Going to the places where history happened adds another dimension to what I can learn from documents alone. For this book, I visited a number of archaeological sites and, among other things, saw mass graves that gave vivid evidence of the disease that killed so many natives and early colonists. The remains of the South’s many mound cities visited by De Soto helped me appreciate the grandeur and sophistication of a lost Indian culture. And standing on the frigid shore of northern Newfoundland, or in the baking Sonoran desert of northern Mexico and Arizona, I sensed just how rigorous life was for early explorers and settlers. More generally, wandering these landscapes put me in the right frame of mind for thinking about exploration, and helped me make the story more vivid on the page.

Do you consider the various European chronicles and accounts to be early forms of travel literature? Do they share much in common with modern travel narratives?

It’s hard to equate explorers’ chronicles with modern travel writing. They were writing for a very particular audience (usually a royal patron), didn’t have contemporary qualms about plagiarism or simply making stuff up, and saw native cultures through a very distorted and Eurocentric prism.

That being said, as a former foreign correspondent, I found it easy to identify with the wonder and disorientation these early Europeans experienced on landing in utterly strange lands. The best chroniclers also convey some of the humor and absurdity that inevitably result when people who don’t have a common language or culture try to communicate and share customs and food. The French, for instance, found native food horribly bland, while Indians recoiled from the garlic and onion on their visitors’ breath.

The biggest difference between that era and ours is that modern travelers have some image of the place they’re going before they get there. Most of these early explorers were clueless about what they would find, and the little information they possessed was riddled with errors and legends.

Whose letters or journals drew you in the most?

Each chronicler has his own style and all are fascinating in different ways. The Spanish were the most prolific, in part because they were the most bureaucratic and kept a careful record of everything—including their own atrocities against Indians. For sheer reading pleasure, though, I’d have to pick Thomas Hariot, an Oxford-educated scholar who was sent by Sir Walter Raleigh in the 1580s to collect specimens and describe the landscape and people of coastal North Carolina. Hariot learned Algonquian, was a skilled observer and his Elizabethan language is familiar to us from Shakespeare. Among his many striking observations was that Indians, who often sickened and died after brief exposure to the colonists, thought the English were “shooting invisible bullets into them”—which in a sense they were, by infecting natives with European germs.

You list “initiative, courage, and hunger for glory and spoils” as classic conquistador attributes. What else did the characters have in common? And did you detect differences among the Spanish, French and English?

True explorers in every era have to improvise. They also need to have an instinct for survival. The most successful adventurers from this era, such as John Smith, were men who were able to shed their assumptions and sometimes even their original missions. They learned to live as Americans. Most didn’t. The failure rate was staggering, and so was the body count.

At the risk of gross stereotyping, there are clear differences between explorers from different countries. The Spanish tended to be God- and gold-mad—zealots who would do and endure almost anything to achieve their aims. The early English were focused on commerce and cared far less than the Spanish about converting or comingling with natives. I found the French the most sympathetic. They took a keen and sympathetic interest in natives, sought trade rather than conquest, and displayed a typically Gallic appreciation of the New World’s sensual pleasures. While the English were starving in warm, abundant Virginia, the French were gathering herbs and roots in frigid Canada. Samuel de Champlain even founded the first gastronomic society in America, the Order of Good Cheer.

I found the passages about the complicated interactions with the native population of the Americas particularly fascinating. Given that first contact is a theme you also addressed in your last book, “Blue Latitudes,” I wonder what other thoughts you have on this subject. When two cultures meet, do you think it’s inevitable that one of them will supersede the other or can they coexist?

First contact offers a fascinating study in human character. How do people who have never encountered or even imagined each other interact, communicate, get along, or not? This is an experience we simply can’t have today, no matter how far we travel. Yet Captain Cook, the subject of “Blue Latitudes,” had it dozens of times across the Pacific. And so did the forgotten European first-comers to America. That was one reason I wanted to write this book, to rediscover one of the richest yet most neglected chapters of our history.

I wish it were a happier story. I highlight a few instances in which individual explorers were vulnerable or open-minded enough to imagine a world where the discoverers and the discovered could coexist. But these were exceptions. European greed, weaponry and disease made the subjugation and destruction of native societies almost inevitable.

Was there an explorer who most deserved the 16th century humanitarian award for best behavior?

Unfortunately, the competition for such an award isn’t very stiff, since most explorers behaved very badly towards natives by the standards of today, and often by the standards of their own. But I’d give the prize to a little-known Spaniard, Hernando de Alarcón, who in 1540 took a boat up the Colorado River, making first contact with the Indians of Arizona. To signal that his intentions were peaceful, he threw down his sword and shield and stepped on them, and lowered his boat’s banner. The Indians responded in kind and Alarcón traveled for several hundred miles without incident, except for trade and the strange and amusing attempts by both sides to understand the other. Indians combed the Spaniards’ beards and patted the wrinkles on their clothing, perhaps thinking it skin. Alarcón tried to explain Christianity with pantomime and stick crosses, but acknowledged that he made little headway. His account of the journey is a rare glimpse of Europeans and natives reaching across the canyon of language and culture as curious fellow humans rather than as combatants.

Finally, you explore the power of myths in American history. What are we to make of our founding myths?

Myths are a way to simplify, make sense of and give meaning to history. Columbus, the Pilgrims, the Founding Fathers—that’s about all we remember of our origins. What I came away with from researching this book is how much messier and more interesting the true story is. We evolved as a country from multiple origins. In a way, early America resembled America today: a diverse and very fluid land. We should embrace that complicated heritage rather than put a band of late-arriving Pilgrims on our national birth certificate.

Ben Keene is a frequent contributor to World Hum and blogs about geography for Oxford University Press.

In recent days, Thomas Kohnstamm has caused a big stir in travel writing and publishing circles, and also in mainstream news outlets like Reuters, CNN and the New York Times. Based on his forthcoming book, Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?, which explores his experiences as a Lonely Planet guidebook writer, as well as publicity material and interviews he has given, the Seattle writer is suddenly at the center of a debate about guidebooks, pay rates and travel-writing ethics. He’s being linked to plagiarism and charged with unethical research practices. Gadling has declared him a fraud. Lonely Planet is up in arms. I recently caught up with Kohnstamm and asked him about the furor and the book.

World Hum: You’ve caused quite a controversy. Are you surprised?

Thomas Kohnstamm: I didn’t expect this kind of huge controversy or backlash. As for Lonely Planet’s reaction, I think when they actually sit down and read the book, they’ll realize it’s not such a hatchet job, and my points are more nuanced. And I say in the introduction to the book that I’m still a fan of Lonely Planet guidebooks and still use the guidebooks.

Let’s go through some of the main issues being raised about you and Lonely Planet.

Sure. I didn’t ask for this thing to start the way it did. There was a New York Observer article. It snowballed from there. The Colombia thing was a comment I made in a much longer interview. It didn’t have to do with my book and was a digression.

You mean this comment: “They didn’t pay me enough to go (to) Colombia. I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating—an intern in the Colombian Consulate.”?

Yeah.

That came off a bit flippant.

Yeah, it was an unfortunate choice of words, and it’s regrettable.

The real issue is that you’ve been attacked for not visiting Colombia. But what, exactly, were you asked to write for the Colombia book?

It was made clear from the beginning that it was a desk update. It’s been assumed by some in the press that Lonely Planet paid me money, and I just sat on it and wrote it from San Francisco without a care in the world. My advance on the work was less than the cost of a flight down to Colombia, so there was no question as to whether I’d be going to Colombia. I was asked to work on the history, culture, environment, food and drink sections.

So you weren’t reviewing hotels or anything like that?

No. That whole controversy has been blown way out of proportion. Lonely Planet didn’t expect me to go to Colombia. They knew full well that I wasn’t going.

Let’s take one of the other sources of controversy. You mention that you’ve taken freebies while working on books. What kind?

I tried to avoid taking freebies. Lonely Planet notes in their books that they don’t exchange positive editorial coverage for freebies and comps. I never once made a direct exchange for a positive review. To make a trip financially feasible, at a certain point you might ask for a discount to stay in a hotel. That doesn’t mean you’re going to give it a great review. I’ve stayed at places that have given me discounts, and I didn’t include them in the book if I didn’t have a good experience. In contemporary guidebooks, there are almost no negative reviews. Generally you include places you like and exclude everything else.

Editors’ note: Another LP writer exploring these issues wrote of this ethical matter: “This is a huge deal in Lonely Planet-land, because there’s supposedly a no-freebies policy. But if you look at the wording in the front of an LP book, it says writers can’t take free stuff in exchange for positive coverage. You can see the giant loophole, right?”

And you’re being accused of plagiarism.

Yeah. Here’s what happened. In the book, I wrote “...even if I don’t get all of the mundane opening hours and hotel prices right. When it comes to those details, what I can’t plagiarize, I can always make up.” It was meant to be humorous. Somebody promoting the book wrote a press release and pulled that out. It’s on the back of the Australian edition of my book, too. Lonely Planet saw it and wrote this big missive to the whole company.

Have you ever plagiarized?

No, what I have done is, places I was unable to visit to update information on, I did updates over the internet and tried to corroborate information with local contacts, people in the know. I always got multiple sources together.

That was your approach for all the books you worked on?

Yeah.

It seems like guidebook writers have a pretty impossible task. You’re asked to cover 1,000 miles of coastline and write 300 restaurant and hotel reviews in nearly 100 pages. Oh, and to update a dozen maps. In four weeks. How can you possibly do that?

You can’t. Not without running roughshod over many details. However, every assignment is different. I never researched a book in North America or Europe, only books in more remote parts of Latin America and the Caribbean. I assume that it’d be easier to research, say, Cincinnati, where it is much more straightforward to gather information (and to follow up over the phone or internet).

Do you just have to know when to cut your losses?

It’s always hard to surrender. I went into each project with the best of intentions and each time went through the long process of attrition, guilt, freak-out and the eventual bruised acceptance that I would not be able to cover everything in the way that I had planned or hoped. Usually when you look at your backpack and want to cry over the prospect of repacking it once again, you know that you are getting close to your breaking point.

You were featured in a New York Times article a little while back on the un-glamorous nature of guidebook writing. You actually got pistol-whipped while on assignment?

Unfortunately, yes. A handgun can still inflict a lot of damage without ever being fired. And that was just the beginning. The six or so guys then set about stealing my watch, ChapStick, shoes, belt, money, condom and tried to steal my jeans, too. I learned that if you spread your feet far enough apart, it is pretty difficult for even six people to take your pants off. The experience was basically the equivalent of having your car put up on blocks and stripped down to the chassis.

Editors’ note: The New York Times story also quotes Kohnstamm talking about his research experience in Bogota, Colombia, which some have pointed out contradicts his statements that he never went to that country. Kohnstamm says the trip referenced in the Times’ piece took place a year after the assignment he wrote from San Francisco.

Is that article what led you to write your new book?

No, I was already a few chapters into my book at that point—although those chapters evolved considerably since then. The book takes place during my first guidebook assignment in Brazil and does not cover my later adventures in Venezuela or other things discussed in the article. I guess I will save all of that for my next book.

You write that travel books fall into three categories. What are those?

I wrote that “the majority of” travelogues and contemporary travel literature tends to be either:

a) sentimental and overly earnest (i.e. other parts of the world offer all of the spiritual-completeness that we lack)
b) curmudgeonly, cheap humor (i.e. other parts of the world are hilariously backward, allow me to mock them)
c) stories of personal heroism and bravado (i.e. I am the most adventurous man in the world, and here’s why)

That’s not to say that there isn’t good and inventive travel writing out there, but, in my opinion, those three tried-and-true publishing formulas dominate the genre.

Which one does yours fall into?

All three. I’d like to think that the difference is that I lampoon myself and the assertions that I make throughout the book. I do my best to show the conflicts in me and in travel writing. I fall into all of the same traps and more.

At one point, you translated an amorous moment with a waitress on a table to “the table service is friendly” in the guidebook. [Editor’s note: This obviously hasn’t gone over well with many readers.] Do you know if other writers have inside jokes like that?

I assume so, but most writers are probably more prudent than I am and wouldn’t admit to including jokes. I’ve seen Russell Tyrone Jones listed in a readers’ letters section before. It’s possible that it was just a coincidence, but that’s also the given name of hip hop icon Ol’ Dirty Bastard (R.I.P.) of Wu Tang Clan fame.

What’s the worst thing about writing guidebooks?

For me, it’s the fact that as a writer you are set up to be a hack. Sure you can drive yourself insane over doing all of the research and writing and you can take on a few thousand dollars’ worth of personal debt to get close to researching everything, but there is only so much that someone can cover and cover honestly—especially over and over again if it’s your career.

And the best thing?

The research stage is never dull. That’s not to say that it’s all good times, exotic cocktails and memorable sunsets, but you do get accustomed to an extremely high level of stimulus in daily life. For me, at least, it became an addiction. I think that’s what really brings the writers back time and time again. However, like any addiction, it is painful when you are without it and, in this case, must spend the following months in solitude, typing up reviews in templates. After my first book, a fellow guidebook writer confided, “I always forget how painful it was to write the last book just in time to sign on for a new one.”

As an insider, do you read guidebooks differently?

Probably. I would argue that the guidebook is to be used as a tool to help with the basics, not as a step-by-step tour guide. I have seen how the somewhat arbitrary inclusion of certain establishments and exclusion of others can have a disproportionately large effect on a place, particularly in developing countries.

Are you still doing travel writing?

I’ve been doing some magazine stuff. At this point, I’m focusing on my second book, which is about the joys of illegitimate fatherhood. It’s a travel-oriented book, too. International illegitimate fatherhood.

Frank Bures is a contributing editor at World Hum.  Co-editor Jim Benning also conducted portions of this interview.

Photo by Annie Musselman.

Related on World Hum:
* Thomas Kohnstamm, Lonely Planet and the Question of Eternal Damnation
* The Trouble With ‘Smile When You’re Lying’

Pico Iyer’s new book The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, which hits bookstores today, is a gorgeously wrought dissection of the Tibetan spiritual leader’s peripatetic life, philosophy and status as an iconic figure throughout the world. While not a work of travel literature in a strict sense, it is infused with vivid descriptions of the many places where the quiet monk takes his message of peace and understanding, particularly his headquarters-in-exile, in Dharamsala, India.

In Iyer’s first interview about the work, I talked with him by phone Monday from Santa Barbara, where he lives three months out of the year.

World Hum: How long did it take you to research and write “The Open Road”?

Pico Iyer: On some level, I would say 30 years, which is how long I’ve been following the Dalai Lama around the world. But intensively—five years. I decided just when the war in Iraq broke out that maybe this would be the time both to put together my, at that point, 25 years of experiences with the Dalai Lama, and most of all, I suppose, to try to see what he might be able to offer to a world that seemed ever more fractured and polarized.

So it began with this first meeting that you had with your father and the Dalai Lama?

That’s right. That’s when I was 17, in 1974, and although, as you read, I wasn’t that excited about meeting [chuckles] a colleague of my father’s, I think that some seed was sown in that initial meeting, which meant that the very first time the Dalai Lama came to the U.S., which was five years later, in 1979, I made sure to go and see him.

Could you trace the outline of his international rise to prominence and how you view it within the global community?

He and anyone who thinks about Tibet would date it very precisely to when he won the Nobel Prize in 1989. I remember in the mid-80s he was coming to New York, and I set up a lunch for the Dalai Lama to meet various prominent editors. One day before the lunch, one of the editors called up and said, “Cancel it. We don’t want to come into the office on a Monday morning just to meet a Tibetan monk.” And, literally, five years later, some of the same people were flying all the way from New York to Dharamsala just for a 15-minute interview with him.

There’s an anecdote in the book in which you describe riding around with a journalist acquaintance who was disappointed with the Dalai Lama, who felt that he was too simplistic, almost childish, maybe not even that intelligent. Do you think that that relates to this almost iconic status the Dalai Lama has achieved? Are people bound to be disappointed when they first meet him because they have so many preconceptions about him?

It’s interesting you say that, because that whole chapter is about projection and exactly about all the expectations and ideas we bring to him. But I think in terms of a backlash—not exactly a backlash—but the sense quickly that he was everywhere, and one saw his face in every bookshop, and one heard so much about him that people who never had listened to him and had never seen him assumed, “Well, this must be hype, and he must be the media man of the moment. It must be just a passing fascination.” And that’s very understandable.

One of the book’s charms is that it feels like a journey along that open road, that central image in the book. I also sensed that, as the book progressed, you became more confident in engaging him and his ideas in a debate.

I’m sure you’re right, and I hadn’t quite thought about it in those terms, but that’s very much the hope. So I’m really happy if that’s the way it came out, because I think books are only as exciting as the sense of discovery that we bring to them, and precisely that notion of a journey in any narrative is what holds the reader’s attention, as you travel, not necessarily from ignorance to knowledge, but ignorance to a deeper ignorance [laughs], or to a sense of how much you don’t know, at least.

I took a lot of trouble choosing the title of “The Open Road,” partly because, in some ways, I do see this as a travel book, and when I think of travel, and any of the travel books I’ve written, the real meaning of them is trying to see the world through different eyes. It’s a journey into a different perspective for me.

So this book was, for me, a travel book in the same sense, because it was a journey into how the world looks to a Tibetan Buddhist, and someone who’s really pursued that pathway deeply.

But the book also feels like a genre-hybrid. Were you consciously setting out to blend genres, or is that just something that arises out of the process, and that kind of labeling is left to the marketing department at Knopf [the publisher]?

[Laughs] Well that’s often the case, but it was a very, very conscious choice here. Clearly, the big challenge for me was that so much was known and so much has been done and brought into the world very powerfully about the Dalai Lama. What new is there to say?

And secondly, even by 2003, when I began it, I’d been writing about Tibet for 10 years—no 20 years—by then, so what more could I say? So, in each chapter, I’m approaching a different side of him. But I’m also coming at him from a different side of myself. So one chapter might read somewhat like memoir, and the next would read like journalistic cross-questioning, and the next would read like two people sitting, meditating in a room, and the next would read like a traveler finding himself in this wild global village called Dharamsala.

When do you know when to assert your own identity within the narrative?

In this book, I wanted to give it a very strong, personal quality, having to do with, as you said, my journey, and my developing an acquaintance with him over 35 years.

But I also—especially because it’s the Dalai Lama—wanted to leave myself as invisible as possible. One of the things that I felt I was beginning to understand about Buddhism and the Dalai Lama as I progressed through the book was that the Dalai Lama himself wasn’t important, except insofar as he challenges or encourages us to be different in ourselves.

What do you hope, if anything, your book will accomplish, especially at this moment, with the protests and renewed attention on Tibet?

The only thing I can hope to achieve is to elucidate and, maybe, illuminate for people exactly what lies at the heart of the Dalai Lama’s thinking and, as it were, where he’s coming from in the positions that he takes.

So, I suppose, my hope would be that somebody who’s watching this and is confused and doesn’t know what to make of it, know what to make of the Dalai Lama’s take on it, might pick up this book and come away knowing a little bit more.

Editors’ note: The Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

is a freelance writer in Seattle. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Seattle Weekly, CityLife and Club World Magazine.

Related on World Hum:
* Pico Iyer: On Travel and Travel Writing
* Pico Iyer: ‘I Was Turning Japanese’
* Pico Iyer on Business Class: ‘A Gated Community in the Air’

During the past five years, Robert Reid has researched and written a dozen Lonely Planet books totaling almost a million copies sold, and he has helped update a half-dozen more books. In 2006 he passed up a chance to work on Lonely Planet’s Vietnam title and instead created his own free online guide to Vietnam, Reid On Travel. After we recently wrote about the death of a classic guidebook, I contacted Robert for a chat about changes sweeping the guidebook publishing industry. I tracked him down in Burma, where he was updating Lonely Planet’s controversial guide to that country.

World Hum: How do you think the Internet, and online travel guides in particular, have affected the guidebook publishing industry? Do the traditional publishers see it as a dangerous competitor, an opportunity to reach more readers using a new medium, or maybe a bit of both?

Robert Reid: I used to think the most important thing we guidebook authors