A friend posted a photo of Michael Connelly’s Dark Sacred Night lying next to John Connolly’s A Game of Ghosts and wrote: “Connelly vs. Connolly. Who to read first?” I responded: Cyril.
Visiting LBJ's boyhood home in Johnson City, TX, I thought of the young man who would become president, but I also thought - while standing in the dining room - of how Robert Caro one evening borrowed the keys to the house from the National Park Service and sat LBJ's younger brother down at the table; then, sitting unseen behind him, frantically wrote down his recollections of the often volatile dinner conversations as they flowed freely from the previously reticent sibling.
With no thought to diversity, simply a desire to introduce my travel writing students to great writing, I read last night excerpts from books by Jan Morris, Richard Rodriguez, and Olga Tokarczuk.
Last week I attended an event sponsored by a European tourism bureau. There was the usual mix of travel agents and travel writers, both groups, as usual, keeping to themselves. Watching the travel agents, one of the travel writers expressed surprise that they were still around. I wondered if they were thinking the same about us.
In his latest collection Figures in a Landscape, Paul Theroux has an appreciation of Hunter S. Thompson. The two men became friends, which isn’t surprising, since Theroux is a kind of gonzo travel writer.
"I was born and bred in a tiny, low-ceilinged ground-floor apartment." So begins Amos Oz's brilliant memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness. And from that home what heights he reached.