Jeu de Paume once dominated every level of French society. Today, only about 200 players remain. From the 16th arrondissement of Paris, Rolf reports on the lingering vestiges of the game that gave birth to modern tennis.
A Vagabond Finds a Home
Rolf finally found a place to call his own — a bunkhouse overlooking the Kansas prairie. It’s infused with the lessons he’d learned from 13 years living out of a backpack.
Should Beginning Travel Writers Write For Free?
Not long ago, Abha Malpani queried me for a Written Road post she was writing about whether or not beginner writers should write for free in the name of building up story clips. Should a person, she asked, be open to writing without pay in the beginning of their career? This is what I told her:…
The New B Movie
Why your video store stocks “mockbusters” alongside the blockbusters: A look at how one Hollywood B-movie studio stays in business.
We Don’t (Really) Know Jack
Commentary: Though innovative and inspiring, “On the Road” is a bad blueprint for life on the road. Kerouac’s characters might cover a lot of miles between San Francisco and New York, but their adventures along the way are rarely more remarkable than what one might encounter in the freshman-pledge wing of a fraternity house.
Did Allen Ginsberg (and Jack Kerouac) inspire Fight Club?
Not long ago, while reading a collection of Jack Kerouac’s journals, entitled Windblown World, I came across a startling entry from April 17th, 1948, which sounds a lot like a page from Chuck Palahniuk’s book (and, later, David Fincher’s movie) Fight Club. From an informal gathering of friends in New York, Kerouac reports the following: Ginsberg went…
Le Musée du Fumeur
Smoking will soon be banned from indoor public spaces in Paris. Is a museum dedicated to the classic French habit a celebration or eulogy?
The Death of the Mile-High Club
Commentary: Regardless of how you try to sugarcoat the flight experience, planes have functionally become flying buses — and the only people who would consider having sex on public buses are invariably on their way home from serving 18-to-24-month prison sentences for crystal-meth possession.
Update: Spring/Summer/Fall 2007
Friends and vagabonders, 2007 promises to be a busy year of traveling, writing and teaching for me. Having returned from Cuba and the Dominican Republic this spring, I will head for Europe this summer, where I will teach writing classes in Russia (at the Summer Literary Seminar in St. Petersburg) and France (at my annual…
6 Answers About Life As a Professional Travel Writer
The Write To Travel blog recently interviewed me about my experiences as a professional travel writer. The Q&A format mimicked the questions I ask writers in my own Travel Writers series, and our resulting exchange might be termed “6 Answers About Life As a Professional Travel Writer.” Here’s what was discussed: 1) Did you always want…
How My Travel Writing Career Got Started
For the past seven years, I’ve been asking my various travel writer interview subjects how they got started writing. Frank Bures recently asked me that same question for a travel-writing class he’s teaching, and this is what I told him: My writing aspirations can be traced back to about age 13, when I started writing…