I am about to take a journey all over the world--through the essays in a book Linda Kot recently sent to me: The Best Travel Writing 2013, edited and selected by Liz Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame.
So far, I've only read the introduction, and already it's good.
She makes an interesting point: we don't read travel writing so we'll think, "I wish I could go there;" we read travel writing to feel that we have been there.
Her opening lines:
Here are two facts I learned long ago about travel writing:
1. There is no story in the world so marvelous that it cannot be told boringly.
2. There is no story in the world so boring that it cannot be told marvelously.
As in all writing, the work of the writer is what makes an essay great--not the subject matter itself.
The travel stories I have selected for this anthology are the ones I believe were told the most marvelously...told with the greatest sense of marvel by writers who took the most personal responsibility for infusing a wonderment into their tales. Some of these stories find their authors flinging themselves into mad acts of danger and some do not, but every piece contains awe in strong enough doses to render the reader enchanted, delighted, compelled, or forever unsettled.
"Enchanted, delighted, compelled, or forever unsettled"--what a challenge for writers of all genres, right?
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