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.
Some Tips On Getting an Agent For Your Travel Book
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…
Update: Spring/Summer 2005
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,…
Signs of Confusion
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.”
The Other Patagonia
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.
Remembering Laurel Lee
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…
Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in Rosedale, Mississippi
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…
Update: Spring 2004
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,…
A Desert By Any Other Name
The desert coast of Peru is as gorgeous as it is baffling.
Native eye for the tourist guy
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.”
Update: Winter 2004
Friends and vagabonders, New Year’s 2004 finds me in Peru, where I am roughly halfway through my drive across the Americas on the Land Rover-supported “Drive Around the World” expedition. Since departing from San Francisco in early November of 2003, we have traveled overland through southern California, the Baja peninsula, mainland Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador,…