The Best American Travel Writing 2014
In the Best American Travel Writing 2014, series editor Jason Wilson points out, "Travel writing, as we've come to know, is all about travail. We've been told that travel without suffering makes for a lousy story." Indeed, there are some hair-raising tales here, none so much as Amanda Lindhout and Sara Corbett's "460 Days," which details Lindhout's captivity by guerrillas in Mogadishu. Other trips I would gladly pass on are the one to Sarajevo by war correspondent Janine Di Giovanni in "Life During Wartime." Of course, that's her profession, but what makes a person go to the most dangerous places on Earth? She writes, "Room 437 would be my home, on and off, for the next three years: the mangy orange blanket, the plywood desk with cigarette burns, the empty minibar, the telephone on the bedside table that never rang because the lines were cut."
But most of these pieces were about places that I would like to go to, and some to places I know quite well. One of my favorites was Peter Selgin's "My New York: A Romance in Eight Parts." He writes about a day he spent as a teenager in the city with his best friend, and it reminded me of days I spent in New York with my friend, Bob. He's close to my age, so he remembers the old New York that I do: "How I missed seedy Times Square! How I longed for the days before the peepshows succumbed to Walk Disney!"
Other favorites were David Sedaris' "Now We Are Five," about his family renting a house on the North Carolina shore shortly after the suicide of his youngest sister; Gary Shteyngart's "Maximum Bombay," which covers his trip to the Indian city: "I've only been here for 10 days, but I have been chased out of a housing colony by gangsters, charmed by psychoanalyzed Bollywood stars, banged up after jumping out of a moving train, and eternally convinced of the prescience and wisdom of railroad parrots."
I don't fish, but I understand why some people do after reading Bob Schachosis' "Sun King:" "In my dreams the piraja skyrockets out of its watery underworld, a piece of shrapnel from a submerged sun, like a shank of gold an archaeologist might find in the tomb of an Incan king." Nice simile. And then there's the fantasy of getting away from it all, which is detailed in Steven Rinella's "Dream Acres," in which the author purchases a ramshackle cabin on an Alaskan island: "It's a place where black bears gnaw mussels from the rocks in what might be described as our yard and killer whales pass by so close that you can hear them even with the door closed."
I was fascinated by Tony Perrottet's "Birthplace of the American Vacation," which talks about William H. H. Murray, who wrote the first guidebook to the Adirondacks: "The American vacation was born--quite literally. The scions of New York City took to declaring that they would "vacate" their city homes for their lakeside summer retreats, and the term vacation replaced the British holiday in common parlance."
Hands down my favorite piece was Harrison Scott Key's hilarious "Fifty Shades of Greyhound," the author's adventures while traveling by bus. I wish I could quote the whole thing, but here is one: "When I tell this story, sometimes people ask why, given my general state of mental health and fiscal stability, I would choose to ride to the other side of the North American landmass in the world's fastest portable toilet, passing through a gauntlet of unholy downtowns where I would likely be accosted by psychotic barnacles who desired to rape and eat my carcass behind an Americas Best Value Inn."
This volume was guest-edited by Paul Theroux, perhaps the most pre-eminent travel writer working today, and he chose some great pieces. One inclusion, Elif Bautmann's "Poisoned Land," seemed better suited to the Best Science Writing book--it was about efforts to understand a disease partial to those living in the Balkans and seems out of place here.
But other than that, this is a great collection of places to fantasize about going to, or staying very clear of.
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