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.
A couple months ago I received an email from a Facebook friend I've never met announcing the publication of her new book and listing the various ways that I - and all her other friends - could help her promote it. The result, at least on my end, was this piece that appeared yesterday on Literary Hub: https://lithub.com/herman-melville-how-to-promote-your-future-classic-about-whales/
When I teach travel writing, and get to the all-important ending, I always refer students to Sue Hubbell’s New Yorker story, “The Great American Pie Expedition.” After eating pies throughout the eastern United States, the author arrives in Oklahoma, where she is pulled over by a state trooper for speeding. Knowing the profession’s fondness for the quintessentially American dessert, and hoping to make the most of a bad situation, she asks the officer if he can recommend a good place for pie. “Sorry ma’am,” he tells her, in a line that closes out the story, “but you’re in cobbler country now.”
I was happy to see that yesterday’s New York Times honored the writer with an obituary, and delighted that it mentioned cobbler country.
The article in Sunday’s New York Times Book Review on the Nobel Prize for Literature – which is not being given this year because of a sex abuse scandal within the Swedish Academy – cited Clive James as a worthy if unlikely recipient. Unlikely because he’s very funny. (The members of the academy may be into sex but – judging from past awardees – they’re not into humor.) Then this passage of James' was cited:
“Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing. Those who lack humor are without judgment and should be trusted with nothing.”
Which makes one wonder if it’s worth bringing the prize back at all.