World Hum | Travel | Travel Writing and Tall Tales: An Historical Perspective

Travel dispatches from a shrinking planet

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Vagrant Ruminations of a Compulsive Traveler

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Rolf Potts: Revelations from a Postmodern Travel Writer

His new book “Marco Polo Didn’t Go There” includes his best stories from the past 10 years. Michael Yessis asks him how travel writing has changed in the last decade—and what he sees for the future.

AUDIO SLIDESHOW

Notes From an Unofficial Tourist Greeter

Summer is over, and so is Julia Ross‘ season as an ambassador to travelers in Washington, D.C.’s Woodley Park neighborhood. She’s happy to be off duty.

THE LIST

10 Great Travel Race Movies

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HOW TO

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ASK ROLF

How Should I Spend My Time in Spain?

Vagabonding traveler Rolf Potts answers your questions about travel

BOOKS

Unsentimental Journeys: Wrestling With Paul Theroux

Bronwen Dickey considers “Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: 28,000 Miles in Search of the Great Railway Bazaar”

TRAVEL BLOG

4.30.08

Travel Writing and Tall Tales: An Historical Perspective

Nilanjana S Roy reminds us that the story of Thomas Kohnstamm and the controversy he’s stirred up are nothing new. She writes, “The issues that Kohnstamm raises—poor pay, insufficient time, too much territory to cover—have plagued the travel writing industry ever since the Egyptians, Arabs and Chinese sent off emissaries to see what the rest of the world was like.”

She goes on to say, “Throughout history ... travel writing has been perhaps the most strongly fictional branch of non-fiction writing,” pointing to Herodotus and Sir John Mandeville, and Umberto Eco’s map dilemma.

Roy writes:

In one of his beguiling essays, Eco asked how one might create an accurate map of the world. The only way would be to create a map that was of the same scale as the world, where every change was chronicled by an army of mapmakers as it happened. Of course, every change the mapmakers made would have to be recorded by another set of mapmakers, and so on. Even the most generous guidebook creator cannot hope to create a perfect, up-to-date guidebook; by the time the book comes out, the world it describes has changed.

Looks like you’re in good company, Thomas Kohnstamm.

Pictured: Sir John Mandeville

Posted by Michael Yessis • 4.30.08
Categories: Weblog • Life of a Travel Writer

Permalink • Comments (3)

COMMENTS

Michael, Nilanjana is a ‘she’, not a ‘he’. That’s the only thing that doesn’t sound right in this piece.

Vinod

By Vinod Ekbote on 4.30.08 at 10:48 PM

Thanks, Vinod. Just corrected.

By on 5.1.08 at 04:05 AM

Yeah, well...They should give it a name. Creative travel writing, or something like that. BTW, did Columbus perhaps depend on a lonely planet guide when he landed up in the Americas instead of finding his way to India?

By Ling on 5.1.08 at 04:10 AM