In Coral Gables last night the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office was celebrating the Centennial of the Republic of China while, a few blocks away, Stacy Schiff was reading at Books & Books. I chose to hang with the Taiwanese, which meant I missed my chance to ask the author of Cleopatra about her recent review of a collection by one of my favorite authors. On the off chance that Ms. Schiff reads this blog, I am copying the letter I wrote to the New York Times Book Review (which chose not to publish it):
I hope that Stacy Schiff’s complaint of occasional staleness in Jonathan Raban’s essay collection “Driving Home” (Sept. 18) doesn’t discourage potential readers, especially since the charge, in at least one instance, is grossly unjustified.
Considering Raban’s account of the Mississippi floods of 1993, Schiff writes that it is “closely observed” but “difficult to appreciate” in the aftermath of Katrina. Yet the two disasters have almost no connection; Raban, on this trip, never ventured south of Missouri.
And “closely observed” is faint praise for a masterpiece of literary nonfiction that combines exhaustive reportage with brilliant interpretation. In it, Raban captured not only the news of rising water but also the essence of a Midwestern ethos – and, breathtakingly, tied the two together. “Flying to Minneapolis from the West, you see it as a theological problem,” the piece begins, and then goes on to compare the unruly river, in this “right-angled, right-thinking Lutheran country,” to “John Calvin’s bad temper ... the wild beast in the heart of the heartland.” For nearly two decades I have read aloud the first page of “Mississippi Water” to travel writing students, and no one has ever complained of a lack of freshness. Great writing has no sell-by date.
I never thought much about Andy Rooney until I went to Normandy. It was May of 1994, one month before the big events commemorating the 50th anniversary of D-Day. My last night was spent at the chateau that had served as the Allied press headquarters shortly after the invasion. I had searched it out because it warrants an entire chapter in one of my favorite travel books, Normandy Revisited by A.J. Liebling, and I was delighted when I learned that it is now a bed & breakfast.
In the morning, in the breakfast room (which still had the small sign "Press Room" over the doorway), the owner's wife showed me the guestbook. Looking for Liebling's signature, I came to Andy Rooney's. He had been a reporter for Stars & Stripes and, like many old reporters, had come back to visit. Marie-Jose remembered him being very moved by his return. She knew little about his fame as a kind of prime time cranky uncle; to her he was a man who had seen war up close and, half a century later, had not forgotten it.
I needed to find a copy of Sue Hubbell's great New Yorker piece "The Great American Pie Expedition" for a travel writing class I'm teaching (to show the students how to nail an ending), so yesterday I went to the Broward Main Library to see if it was there. (It was, in the collection Far-Flung Hubbell: Essays from the American Road.)
The homeless were camped out in the park in front of the library. Near the sidewalk a woman with a darkly tanned face slept on the grass next to a copy of Conde Nast Traveler. It was from January 2007, I saw on closer inspection, the Gold List issue dedicated to the "World's Best Hotels and Resorts."
There are people who listen to BBC news because they find it more objective than American versions. Some people just like the accent. I admire the writing. Yesterday the Cairo correspondent signed off from what he called "an unhappy, fretful country."
From yesterday's New York Times Travel section photo feature "Why We Travel." (The photo was of a nighttime park backed by skyscrapers and filled with people holding candles):
"My husband and I are eight months into a three-year trip, and are blogging about our experiences... This photo was taken during the candlelight vigil held in Victoria Park in Hong Kong for victims of the Tiananmen Square protests. Thousands of people crowded the park. It was a moving experience even though we didn't understand anything that the speakers were saying because of the language barrier."
I e-mailed my Lithuanian friend Aurelija about "Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!" and she told me not to worry. "About these people," she wrote, referring to the great benighted, "we tell jokes."