Commentary: Though the outgoing Harper’s editor’s opinions invariably carry a left-wing slant, Lapham would seem to be a profoundly conservative thinker — someone who has never questioned the insipidity of his elite, east-coast patrician-intellectual assumptions.
Travel-culture essay: The rhetoric of tourists and travelers is not just trapped in the rituals of human vanity: it has become hopelessly mixed up in the postmodern wash.
Why you need an agent These days, book editors want to deal initially with agents, not authors. An agent is your best intermediary to the book world. A committed agent will work to help you through the legal aspect of contracts, and help manage your career. Your agent will be your initial editor, as you…
Friends and vagabonders, After my return from Brazil in 2004, I’ve spent a good portion of the past year splitting time between Baja and USA locations such as San Diego, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Wichita, and New Orleans. This July I will travel to France, where I’ll teach a travel memoir class in Paris. After that,…
Travel-culture essay: As alarming as it can be to find “Fried Rice With Crap” on a menu in Asia, bad translations can go both ways. Indeed, it’s only a matter of time before someone travels to China and discovers that the “Crouching Tiger” Chinese ideogram on his butt cheek (purchased in good faith in Seattle) is provincial slang for “Adult Diapers.”
During his stint as writer-in-residence for a global Land Rover expedition, Rolf explores the recently completed Carretera Austral (Southern Highway) through Chile’s Aisen province.
My favorite writing teacher from my college days, memoirist Laurel Lee, died of pancreatic cancer last week in Oregon. She was 58 years old. Laurel was perhaps best known for her 1977 book Walking Through the Fire, which was a Christian-themed account of her simultaneous struggle with Hodgkin’s disease, a dangerous pregnancy, and the fact…
Last month, while I was driving down the Mississippi River on a magazine assignment, I had a curious experience in Rosedale, Mississippi. As I was eating lunch in a place called Leo’s Market, a waitress mentioned that Rosedale is the place where the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange…
Friends and vagabonders, After four months of living out of a Land Rover, I have completed the San Francisco-to-Tierra del Fuego leg of the Drive Around the World expedition. It was an amazing experience across 13 countries, and I wish my expedition teammates luck as they continue this spring through Australia, Southeast Asia, India, China,…
The desert coast of Peru is as gorgeous as it is baffling.
When Rolf picks up a traditional, skirt-like lungi in Myanmar, he has no idea the fashion faux pas that will ensue. A meditation on “going native.”
