Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
sure I didn't want any service articles (“How to Do Barcelona in Three Days!”), nor was I
looking for any ideas for my own future trips. I don't read great travel writing to say, at the
conclusion, “I want to go there!” I read great travel writing to feel, at the conclusion,
I have
now been there
.
I wanted, by the end of my reading, to know all these places deep in my own bones.
Among the articles that I rejected were tales of extraordinary daring, gorgeous adventure,
exotic locations, and impossible situations—but boring. Sometimes I was surprised by how
boring the writing about such interesting places could be. I wondered, Do these people not
have editors who make them write a dozen drafts so that they get it done properly?
Whatsurprisedmemore,though,waswhenIfoundfascinationinsubjectsthatImightoth-
erwisehavethoughttobedull,orevenspent.Tomymind,oneofthemostremarkablepieces
in here is Daniel Tyx's story about
not
traveling—a faithful recounting of the year in which
he
didn't
walk the U.S.-Mexico border, as he had once quite seriously planned to do. (This
was during a time in American literary history when, as Tyx says, “everyone seemed to be
doing something with their year, then writing about it”—a tactic with which I am somewhat
familiar.) Tyx writes about the epiphanies he
didn't
have because of not taking that long trip
(the loneliness he
didn't
conquer; the landscapes he
didn't
witness; the cultural exchanges
he
didn't
enjoy). He ponders with real feeling and seriousness the question of what we be-
come when we let such a journey pass us by. What happens when we choose, instead, to live
a quieter year, with more domestic revelations, full of “the satisfactions and preoccupations
ofdailylife”?Thispsychologically honestaccountwassomehowheapsmoreinterestingand
suspenseful to me than a macho article about the most dangerous ski trail in the world, or
whatever. I would not have imagined that this could be true—that the act of
not
traveling
could make for such a good travelogue—but Daniel Tyx did it.
In fact, it was humbling for me to read many of these pieces, because they kept messing
withmyassumptionsaboutwhatconstitutesaninterestingstoryandwhatdoesnot.Thereare
magnificent articles in this collection that I would never have assigned if I were a magazine
editor. If, for instance, John Jeremiah Sullivan had come to me and said, “I want to write
a long feature article about my trip to Cuba to visit my wife's family,” I would have said,
“Dude, nice try, but there's no way I'm paying for your trip to Cuba to visit your wife's fam-
ily!” Because nobody needs to read another article about an American visiting Cuba! Seri-
ously! I would probably have told Sullivan to go write about the most dangerous ski trail in
the world instead. And I would have been dead wrong, because
everyone
needs to read John
Jeremiah Sullivan's story about his trip to Cuba to visit his wife's family. It is so good, so
trenchant, so quivering with human life and love and the real familial consequences of in-
sane political theatrics that I placed it very first in this collection—right at the front of the
book—just to make sure nobody skips it.
