The McWetlog

Let’s face it: travel writing, for the most part, sucks. It’s vapid, junket-driven, cliché-laden dross in which anything remotely interesting is boiled away for fear of offending the travel industry whose ads pay for said junkets and for the travel sections of the weekend editions of newspapers in which this stuff appears. Chuck Thompson makes this point in his new book, Smile When You’re Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer. Not even the Lonely Planet guides (“Lonely Planet is the only publisher I know of that seems to actively dislike its readers”) are exempt.

It’s an entertaining read, but it doesn’t quite make it. Attacking the clichés of the genre would make for a pretty slim volume; there are chapters sharing his experiences as a travel magazine editor, as a travel writer, and as a traveller, full stop. They seem like padding to me, but if nothing else, they explain how easy it is to become jaded by the travel industry. His realization that his dislike of the Caribbean is because of the juxtaposition of luxury resorts and endemic poverty resonates with my own ambivalence about the idea of vacationing there. His off-colour, disaster-laden travel stories are just the sort of thing that would be unlikely to appear in the travel section of a newspaper, but it’s hardly transgressive that they’re seeing print — Paul Theroux was writing stronger stuff 30 years ago.

And there’s a point there: there are two genres of travel writing, the literary sort (Chatwin, Naipaul, Theroux) and the advertorial sort; this book is about the latter (even if, in one telling passage, Thompson nails Theroux for writing the advertorial pabulum that his overall body of work seems to stand against).

Smile When You’re Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer by Chuck Thompson

Amazon.ca • Amazon.com

Off to Renfrew yesterday afternoon to deposit accumulated cheques (our banks are there, not here); between the Ontario-Quebec border and Renfrew we passed over no fewer than six pairs of parallel cables stretched across the road. I was going to Ask MetaFilter about it when we got home, but it turns out the question has already been asked, and answered: they’re axle sensors, which measure traffic and average speed. These were all on county roads; I wonder what they’re up to.

Two travel narratives about road trips to Alaska have come to my attention within the last 12 hours or so: Brian Tiemann’s three-week whirlwind from San José and back, complete with GPS tracklogs and tons of photos; and The Globe and Beyond, a trip journal by a couple who’ve quit their newspaper jobs and spent nearly the entire summer on the road (via Gadling). Of course this is giving me ideas, however impractical they may be. I can still dream.

News coverage of the Jetsgo bankruptcy kept mentioning how people with Jetsgo tickets should call the Canadian Transportation Agency: first the news reported that Jetsgo said to do that; then the news said so itself. Though I once worked in the transportation sector, albeit obliquely, I couldn’t figure out why. From checking their site, though, I presume it’s to find out what your options are; they’ve certainly put together a handy page of advice for Jetsgo ticketholders.

If you’ve been following my del.icio.us links — and you should; they’re over there on the sidebar — you’ll have noticed that I’ve linked to a few travel writing resources. I’ve long been interested in the genre — if nothing else, I enjoy reading it, especially the non-service-journalism, non-luxury, off-the-beaten-track stuff. It’s a little disheartening to find out what a grisly business it is, with writers getting next to a pittance for their work. In part, that’s because publishers can: lots of people want to be travel writers. Anyway, in addition to these guides on travel writing, there’s also a blog that covers “the travails of travel writing.” (Most of these links were found via Gadling, an adventure-travel blog.)

I can think of at least two friends who will find this stuff very interesting.

Related: My travel writing links.

Kudos to James for bringing to our attention that this thing about Yonge Street being the longest street in the world is a crock of shit. Yonge Street ends at the Holland Marsh and is only 56 km long; calling Highway 11 (as Yonge Street then was) Yonge Street and tacking on another 1,840 km is just as valid as adding about 2,200 km to Winnipeg’s Portage Avenue by extending it (as Highway 1) to Horseshoe Bay, British Columbia.

The doubleplus isolated island of Tristan da Cunha has an online newspaper. Via Boing Boing.

Which side of the road do you drive on? This page catalogues which countries are left-hand or right-hand drive, and examines the reasons why. (Huw submitted this one for The Map Room on account of its map, but it fits better here.)

“With the confluence of demand, venue, and product, the grilled chicken sandwich came to town, and Bishkek hasn’t been the same since.” Chicken sandwiches come to Kyrgyzstan.