(an excerpt) Why is so much travel writing so boring? Why on Monday morning do people talk about an op-ed piece they read in the Sunday paper, or a sports column, or a magazine essay, or a feature profile, but rarely a travel story? Why do the travel magazines, lavish with tips and sumptuous photographs,…
A “close reading” is a detailed examination of a text to study its design. The goal is to explore how an effective text works, and consider the decisions and strategies the author used in creating it. There is no rigid set of rules about how one must approach a close reading, but there are a…
I am not a painter, I am a poet. Why? I think I would rather be a painter, but I am not. Well,for instance, Mike Goldberg is starting a painting. I drop in. “Sit down and have a drink” he says. I drink; we drink. I look up. “You have SARDINES in it.” “Yes, it…
(an excerpt) We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches…
Cultural criticism: During a journey across south and southeast Asia, Rolf reflects on the changes he’s seen over the course of 20 years as a vagabonding traveler.
1) The story begins to flow once you pinpoint the right idea The book is the idea. Once you have that idea, it just flows out. This is perhaps the best advice I can offer. Taking an idea, a central point, and pursuing it, turning it into a story that tells something about the way…
My grandpa was a farmer shaved with big hands on his straightedge wiping grey goo onto a newspaper fold at the kitchen table white chipped pan warm dirty water he stared out at the fields never missed a spothis eyes were set deep like a crop he’d always hoped for and he talked so slow…
1) On the intrinsic human urge to travel The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown, the bear…
By Larry Habegger (an excerpt) The best travel stories are really stories about life, with lessons for the writer and reader about ourselves and the people and places in our still magical world. We don’t have to travel far to explore both the outer and inner worlds. Some of us love to roam the world,…
This is the kit Amanjano uses to make Mentawao tribal tattoos, of the sort he (and shaman like him) wears all over his body. The top item is a palm-wood hammer that is used to tap the wood-mounted nail (note lower item) when injecting tribal ink under the skin. Tattoos are one of the first…
My second host in the Siberut Island rainforest was Amanjano, a 62-year-old shaman who lived on a scenic bend of stream deep in the jungle. Amanjano proved to be more laid-back and happy-go-lucky than Amantiru, my first host – in part, I’m sure, because of his nature, but also because of his age. Whereas Amantiru…
