The Best American Travel Writing 2010 by Bill Buford

The Best American Travel Writing 2010 by Bill Buford

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As part of thepersonal essays I am writing about my experience in Dharamsala, India this summer, I read selected essays for different models onwriting in this genre. It was hit and miss, but I have comments on a few that stood out to me in terms of content and form.

1.       Appointment in Istanbul by Henry Alford

Content:           This is the first essay in the collection.  The fact that this story took place in Istanbul is beside the point.  The moral of the story could be gained from the first few lines.  “Sometimes what you get is not what you thought you wanted.  I had just broken up with my boyfriend of ten years back in New York, and had flown to Istanbul to sightsee my heartbreak away” (1).  Of course, the narrator does not forget about the personal baggage, which is made quite clear in the last, ironic paragraph, “thanks for helping me forget about my break up” (3). 

            I guess the important thing I gained from the content of the essay was how powerful our past experiences and emotions are in trying to interpret our experiences abroad.  Whether or not the man the narrator met was interested in him or his money is unclear, but it does not matter.  Try as we might to escape or sightsee our hearts away, they always have a way of coming up and defining our experiences.

            This is important to recognize, especially right now when I am trying to figure out the balance I want between objective and subjective within my own honors thesis project.  I tend to think objective is more or less subjective than we let on.

Form:

            This essay is very short, only three pages long.  I think that says something about the length of our protagonist’s trip and maybe something about how futile his attempt is to forget about his lost relationship.  It did not need to be any longer.  We did not need to know the particulars, which established more of the author’s intent to really just escape it for a bit.  I think he also does that so that anyone coming from any experience visiting any place in an attempt to escape their problems can relate.  I think eliminating the details about the situation made that more possible.  “Boyfriend of ten years” was enough to show a reader that this was a long, serious relationship that he is clearly going to struggle getting over.

            Prose and dialogue are mixed very well, giving the narrator the stage and control of the story.  We are given just very few words from the other man, enough to let us think about how the situation might have looked from an outsider’s opinion.

            Other than that, the prose was very straight forward.  Sentences were not short or long, and the details were very concrete, which would be expected.  There are, however, a lot of intentional fragments, giving it a more personal, informal feel.  This is something I tend to do in my own writing.  

2.       The Undead Travel by Avi Davis

Content:

            This is an essay about a guy living in Paris who visits Sighisoara, Romania for a trip.  Here he is confronted with the vampire myths that seem to stem out of this location.  In general, I learned a lot about the vampire craze and how it has morphed into its own industry.  It does not feel like a personal essay though.  It compiles history, ethnography, makes and point, and the personal elements stay out for the most part—mostly just to get us there to begin with.  In that sense, I’m not sure that the beginning paragraphs about his journey are necessary to the essay.

Form:

            There was a lot to go off of her—I mentioned already that it was not that personal, but he does vacillate between history, his account, and characters that he encounters in Sighisoara who help give us more context for the essay.  I was surprised by how background history was included.  The Romanian princes, the lack of credibility of the “Dracula myth”—books published about vampires up to the present date, etc.  It is very clear that this author did his homework.  A lot of it came from some independent research, but he spends a lot of the time doing indirect dialogue with this woman, Jeanne, who has some insider knowledge, giving more credibility to the argument.

            There were a lot of images that played into this vampire theme.  The way he described Petre, the drunkard, was where I noticed it the most.  The narrator says that place “felt ominous.”  Petre “paints his face white” and has “a great red grin” while making “violent declarations” (40).  This really sets us in the kind of ominous mood that the narrator is feeling.  These images continue when it talks about the fabricated vampire industry as “leeches” (42) that live “off the tourists” (45). 

            Other things about form to note are that the author uses almost exclusively long sentences.  It helps establish a serious tone to the essay—or maybe a creepy tone to the essay, which would match the content. 

            The beginning does not give us much about the emotions of the narrator, which leaves the feelings kind of ambiguous.  I’m sure he did that intentionally, since he concludes that his feelings on the vampire myths do not necessarily depend on his logical knowledge that they have very little founding.

            It is not till the last few paragraphs that Davis starts getting to the point.  The conclusion is not personal to match the introduction.  I would have preferred to have a glimpse of his own thoughts and motivations in some kind of summary statement, or even fragment, but oh well.  I think my essays will be more personal, though I like the way he is able to include so much background history.

3.       The Hadza by Michael Finkel

Content:

            This was one of the first essays I turned too since I noticed it was from National Geographic.  Since I have been wondering about the best way to include cultural information and personal insights into my own travel essays, this was a great read. 

            The Hadza are a group of nomads in northern Tanzania that Finkel goes to stay with for a few weeks.  We see their life through Finkel’s eyes as he focuses mostly on a hunting ritual he participates in.  By the end he says that “it’s only a matter of time before there are no more traditional Hadza scrambling in the hills with their bows and arrows, stalking baboons” (62), which is sad, but the fact of globalization.  It makes me wonder what the world will look like in 100 years.

            Favorite part?  That the Hadza men get mad at their women when they bath since “the longer they go without baths…the more attractive they are” (66). 

            My two questions for Finkel are 1) If he honestly did not get a little grossed out by eating baboon brain or if he was just as touch and manly as he claims to have been during the feast, and 2) why nothing is really included about a translator?  This is a huge barrier between the Hadza and the narrator. 

            This essay was entertaining and felt more authentic, reminding us that this is a personal account that tries to give a good representation of these people, but it is limited.

Form:

            This was definitely a longer essay, but I really liked the movement.  It did a great job at weaving personal details and thoughts while still trying to represent a certain population.

            The main structure that Finkel seems to use is by going back and forth between the baboon hunt and the history, observations, etc. about the Hadza in general.  Whenever he would get back to “the present,” he would not indent the first paragraph to keep us oriented.  The hunt frames most of the essay, which I like, since that is how I am planning on structuring my first essay in my own collection of travel essays.  Unlike mine though, this whole essay was written in the present tense.  I have heard that this is the best, direct way to tell a story. 

            The essay jumps right into the story without any kind of elaborate introduction.  It orients us immediately to the narrator and what he is experiencing (something else I am trying to do in my own first essay).  The essay pretty much runs chronologically after that and weaves in anthropological material and legitimate research, showing that Finkel has done his homework.  Yet, at the same time, the narrator is not afraid to insert personal details.  I find it refreshing.

            I liked how “the fate” of the Hadza was put in the middle and not at the end of the essay so that we don’t mistake this for “the point.”  This means that there is a not a lot of need for closure since it was described and conveyed well along the way.

            Humor was also something that we cannot ignore from this essay.  It made it entertaining to learn about these people through the eyes of an outsider, with skin that “does not blend well with the night” (54), like ourselves.  

4.       A House is a Machine to Live In by J.C. Hallman

Content:

            I’m not going to lie; I thought this was one of the more boring essays in the collection that I read.  I don’t know that it is the authors fault, I just think I am not that interested about people who live their entire lives on cruise ships, though the concept of traveling “the world without leaving home” (156) is interesting. 

Form:

            One positive device that this essay uses is two epithets.  Though they are kind of long, so most people probably don’t read them, they are both very vocal that this essay is going to be exploring the concept of Utopia. 

This essay used a lot of history and personal observation to tell the story of people who live on these ships, especially Kloster, the main character that Hallman follows around to understand more about this topic.  I think history was the strongest asset to this essay’s creation.  Hallman uses lots of historical sources to give background to Kloster and others who live this kind of life.  In a way it reminded me of the essay The Undead Travel the way the narrator uses history and personal details that were not-so-personal by describing the individuals he encounters instead of his own thoughts and insights.  This essay also used a big of dialogue to convey that.

            I am noticing that through most of these essays, paragraphs are not indented when you are changing ideas or jumping from history, reminiscing, etc. to the “present” story.  This essay does a lot of that, helping the reader not get lost and subtly say, “hey, we are changing gears.” 

            This essay was told in the past tense.  It was long because it was thought out and researched, but yeah, I was struggling.  I think one of the reasons was that the introduction, in my opinion, was slow and not engaging.  I think this is supposed to be more of an informational essay than one for entertainment.  It is interesting to have both kinds included in this anthology.  As far as my collection of travel essays are concerned, I’d like to do more of the Finkel tried to do and incorporate personal details and a bit of humor with anthropological detail to make them enjoyable to read for people who may not otherwise be interested in the population I am studying.  

5.       Walking: An Essay on Writing by Peter LaSalle

Content:

            I really liked this essay!  It was about the narrator discovering, while on walks, the hit-in-the-face kind of inspiration that a writer sometimes encounters.  “It” happened while in Paris and Rio.  The content of this essay made me want to write.

            This essay felt very “Street Haunting” on me.  While it wasn’t straight up stream of conscious (oh no, I am bleeding into form!) it was the most personal of the essays I have read so far.   I do wonder if writing/walking has become a form of cliché in that sense.  I also wonder why he is able to carrying on about this mysterious “it” for a few pages, when I distinctly remember my first college creative writing teacher telling me to eliminate all “it’s” in my crappy poem because we should not be ambiguous.  Here, I think it works. 

Form:

            This entire essay is written in the past tense, and the most obvious device is that the essay is divided into two parts for the two separate places, Paris and Rio. 

            The first part is about Paris.  He jumps right into giving us setting details and his purpose and motivation for being in Paris, which I find refreshing.  As he is walking he starts to think, and as he is walking along he has these realizations triggered by the things he is observing.  This is why it reminds me of Virginia Woolf’s “Street Haunting.”  Though the setting is what is acting on our narrator, this essay has almost nothing to do with the actual things he is seeing, rather what is going on inside of his mind.

            I noticed that LaSalle uses parenthesis once in awhile to show more personal thoughts that are tentative, and italics as well.  In the first portion of the essay, the one about Paris, he keeps the italics at a minimum and seems to do it merely for emphasis. 

            However, in the second portion of the essay, we are in Rio.  Again, he orients us, tells us where he is and why he is there, and throughout the thing he relates back to some of the subjects he was musing about in the first essay, such as his girlfriend (now ex girlfriend), that bridges the two essays together.  He also shows in this second essay that maybe he is doing this traveling out of a pretext.  That is a pretty vulnerable thing to say, again reaffirming that this is a very personal essay.

 This author also has a lot of one-sentence paragraphs, drawing emphasis and attention to those short points.  I do this a lot when I write.

            In this second essay I am trying to make sense of the italics.  Instead of an occasional word, there are entire paragraphs italicized.  I guess it worked for emphasis, but it seemed to be the more subconscious type of stuff going on in his mind, much like Woolf.  Since the whole thing is more or less in his head anyways, I think the italics in the second part show us glimpses at his mind’s processes even more so than we have experienced in the first parts of the essay.  This device at the end, juxtaposed with the single line, “I was still sitting on the bench” (200), is a really nice juxtaposition that shows the complexity of the human mind. 

            LaSalle is able to write an entire essay about his mind’s workings and does a good job at keeping us entertained because he uses a lot of personality in his writing style.  There is a nice blend of short and long sentences, dashes, fragments, italics, etc. that keep it going.  I think it tends to give some buildup the same way the writer felt it, and keeps the serious mood of the essay.  There are also some great images that make it grounded in setting while we are still exploring the narrators mind.   

6.       In Defense of Tourism by Peter Jon Lindberg

Content:

            This is definitely my favorite essay in this anthology.  I think I underlined a good third of it…I think a lot of that is simply because I relate so well to the topic.  I hate being “touristy,” and the narrator is able to point out reasons where that is problematic, mostly because he seems to sympathize with the tendency since it is once that he has felt before as well.  This essay is hilarious and witty, and is meant to be persuasive.

Form:

            This essay begins like some of the other essays I have looked at—jumping right into a specific situation (in this case, an argument with a friend) that introduces us to the issue with some concrete detail.  Unlike others, this one did not need to be grounded in one particular setting, though it did give lots of details and specific examples to get the argument across.

            Dialogue is also used off and on in here.  Colloquial phrases and words are also dropped all over the place, creating an informal feel to it.  This is for the everyday person to read.  Fragments and italics are also used here and help make that apparent.

            One device that also works well in this essay is when the narrator directly addresses the reader.  “Maybe you are too” (201) was the first one I spotted on the first page, and latter he tells us to “Google that” (203).  This is very down to earth…

            The narrator does a great job at establishing ethos with the reader by simply playing off of the paradigm of the people that are against being “too touristy.”  It is clear that he knows because he has been in that thinking before, which means he is more believable when he starts bringing up arguments against that mindset.  If he did not establish himself as an insider first, or if he failed to use his humor, we might not easily swallow what he is prescribing.  He addresses this personal insight in the middle, and admits his flaw of thinking, persuading us to do the same.

            Yeah, audience is everything here.  Lindberg knows that he is not addressing people who like cruises and tourist packages, he is directing this at the rest of us who are looking for something more authentic and sometimes prevent ourselves from having a better experience because we are so high-brow about it.

            Another device the narrator seems to use to get his point across is a few facts and stats, though no sources are cited.  That could or could not add or subtract from his point. 

            This essay ended on kind of a “moral of the story” note.  He comes right out and says that we should be “letting go of the suspicion, letting down the defenses, and allowing for a genuine response,” even if that means being a tourist, because that might be a much better experience (205).

            This essay is short, but very convincing.  The beginning and end are framed by the same argument experience with his friend, Alex, which makes it feel complete and summed up. 

7.       Guy Walks into a Bar Car by David Sedaris

Content:

            The story is about a guy who is going on the Amtrak from New York to Chicago and makes a fool of himself by hitting on a drunk, straight guy, and is also framed by a larger story of travel in general and how he seems to be searching for the perfect romance (and feels that he once missed it).  I think this is common theme in travel writing—are we looking for a place, or are we really looking for a person? 

Form:

            For starters, I think the title is very clever—a well known joke, which matches the content well.  I think that Sedaris wants us to feel the way he felt, that the whole experience was a great big joke.

            The essay is divided into two parts, though they are not officially divided the way Walking: an Essay on Writing was.  Like some other writers, Sedaris includes an extra space and does not indent a paragraph that is about a new topic.  Yet, these two distinct parts have an interesting connection not readily apparent.  The second part gives context to the first, and the conclusion ties both parts of the essay together.

            This essay was pretty heavy in dialogue as well.  I think it works well with how he integrates it into his own insights.  The entire thing was writing in the past tense. 

            The tone is steady and somber with bursts of humor.  He knows he is pathetic, or at least that is what he is trying to get across—probably in a way that we relate.  The conclusion really sets us up for that.  Out of loneliness or depression or something he decides to call a guy he knew he shouldn’t have called to ask if “he’d like to hear a joke” (291).  

8.       Take Nothing, Leave Nothing by Simon Winchester

Content:

            This essay is about the narrator’s incident of being banned forever from the tiny little island, Tristan da Cunha, by the inhabitants for sharing information he was not supposed to in writing.  While at first it is set up as being extremely ridiculous, we later see that Winchester has since changed his mind and decided that he had no right to write about these people despite their “fierce devotion to self-protection and privacy” (307), especially as he mourns the fact that the little island is now being turned into a tourist trap.

            I like it, though I felt the ended was a little didactic, especially since the author never gives us any reason why he randomly changed to a completely different viewpoint.  However, I think it brings up an interesting question in travel writing, one that I have always struggled with.  What right do we have to take these stories?  What consequences does our writing leave for the people we try to represent? 

            I think it is slightly funny that he is writing about his regret for writing about this island while simultaneously still writing about the island against their wish.        

Form:

            Most of this essay is told in chronological order and happens over a span of 20ish years. 

            The beginning first establishes the location we are looking at, and then brings us to the narrator and why he cannot join the fellow passengers on the island that they have just landed at.  He then goes into the story of why he is denied access, history of the island, and his journey to discovering that he might have been in the wrong after all.  He establishes time along the way to show us that this was a realization that took years to come to. 

            He does this through writing in the past tense the entire essay and including a lot of history and research.  Like many other essays I’ve read, he keeps flash back and present situation organized by doing a double space and not indenting the first paragraph of the new topic.  Maybe this is all obvious to people, but until I started looking at these essays I did not know how to use this device. 

            The tone throughout the essay is incredibly sarcastic, but once he changes his mind he seems to be more serious.  I can’t tell if the sarcasm was to make us side with him originally or if he is so embarrassed by his initial behavior that he uses sarcasm, but I think it works.

            Winchester also tends to use a lot of dashes.  This is a new convention I’ve used in my writing over the last year, but I really enjoy it.  I think it creates more of a natural way of talking instead of written formality, which is what the narrator seemed to want to portray. 

            The essay ends on a fairly conclusive statement that might be the narrator trying to redeem himself, summing up the story.  I don’t think it is a coincidence that this was the last essay of the anthology either.  This is a pretty strong way to end, telling us exactly where he was wrong, and probably encouraging us to think twice before we commercialize the people we encounter on our travels.