Customer Reviews

The Best American Travel Writing 2000

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I bought this book to get a better idea of what is considered the best in travel writing...and looking back I don't think I was considering it a serious genre, but was rather expecting the sort of self-indulgent, tourist-oriented, glamorized type of article you might find in the average Conde Nast publication. But, with the exception of a few articles (conveniently located at the very end of the book), this collection was terrific. I may not get the titles completely right, but my favorites ranged between cheerful & sweet (Lard is Good for You), detailed and entertaining (night in Central Park), delightfully alcoholic (9am drinking in France), investigative and fascinating (politics in tibet), anthropologically rewarding (the area 50 km outside of Moscow), to downright harrowing (The Last Safari). I'm not going to rave about every piece, because some were too wide-ranging and unfocused for me, and several contributors seemed to have acquired an interest in 'protecting the environment,' but little information about what that actually means.

Overall, if you love collected writings (some don't) and travel (which, oddly enough, some don't), you will enjoy this book. I'm already looking forward to next year's.

The title is right: this is some of the best travel writing I have encountered.

It's a collection of short stories, with travel as a common theme. Few are what I'd call tourist guides.

Some of the first few stories stories are about sailboat racing, surviving a night in New York's Central Park, bus riding in Uganda, trucking in tropical Australia, selecting the Panchen Lama, and documentaries about wine and food. There's plenty of variety.

These stories are like good meals: satisfying, pleasant and easy to digest. But they are not lightweight reading. One learns about places and practices that are strange and sometimes disturbing.

It's a book to read in short sessions. I read it at home, in the evenings, but it would be a great to take on a trip.

After reading this book, I decided I hate travel guides but love travel writing. Travel guides tell you where to go so that you'll run into more pasty, spoiled americans like yourself; travel writing gives you a sense of the land and the people. I loved this collection of essays because it took me to other places and educated me about their history and inhabitants. I learned about the yuppification of Nantucket, the bloody past of Zanzibar, ethnic conflicts in western China, a brutal kidnapping in Uganda, the environmental efforts in Bhutan. Some pieces are frightening; some are humorous. All are enlightening. My only complaint is that I wish more pieces by women had been included -- I would have liked to hear more about the experiences of women in exotic lands. All in all, a fine collection of essays.

While the book has a diversity in destinations it has one quality that remains story to story. Vivid discriptions of unique travel experiences. I must agree with Bill Bryson (Editor) when he states that "travel writing is a genre whose time as come". While many of the names are well know, some of the new names in the collection are pulled from magazines not on my usual reading schedule. A mistake I will correct. But for now I have some new places to look for great travel writing. Lard is Good for You is one example. Alden Jones wrote the piece for Coffee Journal, it is something I may never have read but am mighty glad I had a chance.

I've always enjoyed Bill Bryson's writing, and I've equally enjoyed the pieces he chose for this collection. My favorites were Dave Eggers' "Hitchhikers Cuba" and "Lard is Good for You" by Alden Jones, set in Cuba and Costa Rica, two countries that I'm even more eager to visit after reading these essays. Funny, entertaining, informative stuff.

The title of this book is THE BEST AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING 2000. OK, ok, so I'm obviously a tad behind on my reading. (I only just recently got around to the fine print on my birth certificate which lists the warranty exclusions.)

"To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar that it can be taken for granted."

Perhaps the spirit of the statement is hard to realize nowadays when even Ulan Bator boasts (?) a McDonalds. However, its author, travel writer Bill Bryson, has, as this anthology's editor, pulled together twenty-six tales that will transport the armchair traveler far beyond the well-trod tourist paths. And I say this as one whose wimpy idea of adventure is to dine on a scorching curry in one of London's Balti houses after an afternoon exploring the book stacks at Foyle's.

The only journey in this volume that's personally appealing is the one to Bhutan described by Jessica Maxwell in "Inside the Hidden Kingdom". (That was until I searched the Web for Bhutan tours and was faced with the eye-popping cost of such a trek. Winning the California Lotto will be a pre-requisite, I'm afraid.) Otherwise, scouring France and Spain for the perfect first alcoholic drink of the day, or attending the World Ice Golfing Championship 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle in Greenland, isn't a trip I'll queue for. Neither is spending the night in the depths of New York's Central Park, searching for the remnants of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia's remote highlands, traveling by donkey into Morocco's Atlas Mountains, picking-up hitchhikers in Cuba, or journeying down the Congo River on an over-crowded, squalid, passenger barge. I admire those who do such things, and it makes for great storytelling, but I'm way too soft.

In all the modern travel essays I've read, even if they're about trips to hell and back, nobody is ever permanently hurt. That fact is what makes so horrific "The Last Safari" by Mark Ross, a former safari guide, who tells of the time he and several clients were kidnapped in Uganda by border-crossing, machete-wielding rebels from the Congo. This tragic and shocking narrative is alone worth the price of the book.

All of the contributions to THE BEST AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING 2000 are off-beat by a little or a lot. That common element is what makes the whole worth reading.

If you like Bill Bryson's writing (and I do), you'll enjoy this book. The stories are, for the most part, light, entertaining and enjoyable. My favorite was the one about hitchhiking through Cuba! It wasn't until I moved on to the 2001 Best American Travel Writing edited by Paul Thoreau that I realized how much the stories reflect Bill Bryson's writing. As I worked my way through the book, the writing seemed to be uneven, but I did enjoy the book on the whole and do recommend it to anyone who's into travel literature.

"Best American Travel Writing 2000" is the first edition in yet another outstanding entry in the "Best American" series. It is structured like other "Best American" books, with a series editor and a yearly guest editor putting their heads together and selecting two dozen or so of the best articles to be published in the field during the previous year. Bill Bryson was a very canny choice to be the first guest editor for the travel series, given his recent stature as one of the best selling travel writers around.

The best articeles in the debut 2000 edition include Tom Clynes's account of a truck driver in the Australian Outback, a lament by David Halberstam on the yuppie-fication of Nantucket Island, P.J. O'Rourke's amusing piece about driving in India, and Mark Ross's harrowing first person account of the slaying of eco-tourists in Uganda by Interhamwe rebels. Some of the articles are amusing, some are scary, others are full of wonder, but they are all well written and informative. Anyone who enjoys good travel writing, or who simply likes good storytelling, ought to pick up a copy.

"The more we know of particular things, the more we know of God." this quote, attributed to the philosopher Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677), sets the tone for this wonderful inaugural edition of genuine travel writing. Here you will not find that bland "touristy" flavor of guidebook writing that often squelches my wanderlust. Jason Wilson, the series editor, tells us that it is through the "particular things, small things, the specific ways in which people act and interact, [that] is perhaps our best way of getting beyond the cliches that we tell each other about different places and cultures...." Whether we travel with Mark Ross in "The Last Safari" in Uganda, our hearts in our collective throat as he and members of his tour group are kidnapped and some even murdered by the rebel group Interahamwe, or hunker down with Alden Jones in "Lard is Good For You" as she teaches English in Costa Rica, struggling between her tourist self (longing to sleep on mildew-free sheets in the closest American hotel) and her traveler self (eating food prepared by her hosts using huge quantities of lard), we are right beside them struggling, living, breathing as they masterfully wring buckets of meaning from their experiences. As we savor the rich, densely textured prose, we are immediately transported to a particular landscape. Calling our travel agent is the next logical step.

Americans generally care little for the world outside of its borders. And in the rare cases of foreign travel often Americans, "pay large sums to be transported to some distant place and then be shielded from it." This book not only tells of experiences in foreign countries, but it also tells the story of foreign people and their history. This is one of the most enjoyable books I have read this year. Below are short summaries of each writing with my "rating."

#1- Boat Camp by William Booth. (8) A man gets the urge to race a sailboat to Mexico. Very interesting and very well written. "Almost every sailor I know suffers the affliction. We dream the dream of boats on water."

#2- Lions and Tigers and Bears. (8) No, not the land of Oz, much scarier...Central Park (New York City). This writer decides to stay the night in Central Park despite the danger. Why? "Anybody who dnows anything about New York knows the city's essential platitude- that you don't wander around Cenral Park at night- and in that, needless to say, was the appeal: it was the thing you don't do." Not only a suspenseful tale, but it is packed full of Central Park facts.

#3- This Teeming Ark. (4) A writer travels to the African Congo and spends 12 days riding a barge down a river. Written very well and full of humor, the essay provides good insight into African culture, but I felt the author was a bit degrading toward the people.

#4- The Toughest Trucker in the World. (9) The name says it all. This writer rides along with a trucker who delivers fuel to one of the most remote places on Australia. The ride is full of adventure and great insight into Aussie culture and even Aussie vocabulary.

#5- Hitchhiker's Cuba. (7) "Hitchhiking is what makes Cuba move." Several men drive around Cuba giving rides to whoever wants them. It is not only hitchhikers they pick up, they pick up a lot of culture along the way. The author has a lot of interesting social and political insights.

#6- Nantucket On My Mind. (5) "...many of the true pleasures of Nantucket are not easily gained and cannot be purchased on demand, that they have to be, like everything else in life, earned..." This is some interesting insight into the upper class who have swarmed Nantucket Island and the upper-middle class who resent them.

#7- The Nile at Mile One. (6) Like most of the travel writings, this gives good insight into African society. The author attempts to trace Winston Churchill's journey through Africa. Anyone who has visited a third world country can relate to the following quote, "urban Africans seemed caught in a kind of purgatory, somewhere between the seductions of modernity and the habits of tradition."

#8- Spies in the House of Faith. (6) The longest piece in the book, this was the story of one reporters experience with the Dalai Lama and the transitional nation of Tibet. Very interesting (and a bit sad) to see how the government of China handles the faith of the Tibetan people.

#9- The First Drink of the Day. (1) I am not much of a drinker, so this was pure boredom for me.

#10- Lard is Good For You. (10) This short piece had me in constant laughter. The writer, a volunteer teacher, records her experiences in Costa Rica. I especially appreciated her insight into the "two voices in (her) head," referring to the "tourist' and the "traveler." The tourist wanted her comfort and her cute cultural experiences and the traveler wanted to truly experience life with Costa Ricans.

#11- The Truck. (7) Find out how one man almost dies in the Sahara desert in the country of Mauritania. "Without water you can survive in the desert for twenty-four hours; with great difficulty, for forty-eight or so."

#12- Confessions of a Cheese Smuggler. (4) "The worse the cheese smells the better it tastes." It doesn't get much more exciting than that.

#13- Inside the Hidden Kingdom. (7) This is a great little report on the country of Bhutan, the last independent Himalayan Buddhist kingdom.

#14- Weird Karma. (7) A summary of the writer's experience in India, I especially enjoyed the section on his observations about driving in India, "India is really magical. How can they drive like this without killing people?"

#15- Zoned on Zanzibar. (7) This African island is steeped in folk belief, and the author does an excellent job of showing how a somewhat `modern' nation still follows its own animistic beliefs. "(The witches) walk the streets invisible. They have sacrificed their children to Satan for power... I nod, as if it's a routine warning."

#16- Storming the Beach. (7) A very humorous article about the writer's crazy wish to crash the set of Leonardo DiCaprio's movie, The Beach. Set in Thailand, the writer attempts to sneak through security to get onto the set of the movie. The author is trying to make a point about tourism and the dangers it poses. He writes of the distinction between tourism and `true' travel, "tourists leave home to escape the world, while travelers leave home to experience the world."

#17- The Last Safari. (9) It gets serious here. An American safari guide in Africa writes of his tragic hostage-taking experience where five Western tourists died. It is written excellently and shows the horrible war-torn situation Africa finds itself it.

#18- Winter Rules. (10) This was the best and funniest story in the book. A Sports Illustrated writer goes to the arctic (Greenland) to play golf. A golfer myself, I found the story very amusing, showing the folly (maybe stupidity is a better word) of the true golfer. A good philosophical thought comes at the end of the story, "Life is to often like the stomach of the reindeer, I reflected at dinner: neither delicious nor revolting, but somewhere in between."

#19- From the Wonderful People Who Brought You the Killing Fields. (7) An adventurous tale of two men's journey to the mountains of Cambodia to meet with some of the officials of Khmer Rouge, a rebel group who has killed thousands in Cambodia.

#20- China's Wild West. (6) This is more of an educational piece, but interesting nonetheless. The westernmost province of China seems more like the middle east with a hint of Russian. This makes for an interesting society which is actually ruled by the despised Chinese.

#21- Exiled Beyond Kilometer 101. (6) Russia is a land where the rural areas hardly resemble the urban centers. This piece focuses on the contrast and the hardships that face rural Russians.

#22- Two Faces of Tourism. (6) Tourism and travel are the biggest international product. Bigger than oil, bigger than electronics, people spend trillions on travel and this has had a startling impact on the places that attract these tourists. The article focuses on a relatively unknown tourist spot in Mexico that is on the verge of becoming a major tourist area. "..we visitors are woven into the fabric of the places we visit."

#23- The Very Short Story of Nunavut. (2) The author here tries to repel rather than compel people to visit the new Canadian province of Nunavut. I don't really like the attitude of the author and I am glad he doesn't apply his views to America. If he was consistent with his world view, he would say that no outsiders should come to America and spoil our purity. I think this would be racist, but if he says it about a remote area in Canada he is being culturally sensitive.

#24- One Man and His Donkey. (8) This is the humorous retelling of the author's experience in Morocco with a donkey in the Atlas mountains.

#25- Marseille's Monument. (3) I personally found this to be uninteresting, I think I am biased against the writings that take place in Europe. About the French town of Marseille, the author shows the history of this "cool" town.