Back in May, the Atlantic published a story by Gary Shteyngart about his experiences on the Icon of the Seas, the largest cruise ship in the world. I read it with interest – 28 years ago I wrote about my week on what was then the largest cruise ship in the world, the Carnival Destiny – and annoyance, in part because a lot of the piece was about the author and his discomfort. This annoyance led me to write an essay looking at writing about cruises over the decades, and how it has become more solipsistic: https://theamericanscholar.org/writer-on-board/
Thirty-five years ago this week I started my job as travel editor of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel (then the Fort Lauderdale News and Sun-Sentinel). I would hold the job for the next 19 years, visiting parts of the world – the Caribbean, South America, Asia, Australia – I had never been to before. In 2003 I published a book, A Way to See the World, comprised of stories I’d written for the paper (possibly the last collection of newspaper travel stories ever published). The Sun-Sentinel’s name appeared – either with selected stories or under “Notables” in the back – in the first nine editions of The Best American Travel Writing. The anthology, which debuted in 2000, was discontinued after 2021.
October is Polish American Heritage Month and I have been using that peg to try to set up readings of my memoir at bookstores, a few of which boast of their support of the marginalized and the underrepresented. In American publishing, few groups are as poorly represented as the Poles. Yet I am finding that not all marginalized groups are equal; some, in fact, are not even regarded as marginalized.
My ode to the Miami Open - and the beauty of tennis - appears in the new issue of The Miami Native: https://www.miaminativemag.com/articles/the-subtropical-open
The other day I found comments people had written about my books on a book review website. And I was struck by how often the comments with the worst syntax complained about the writing.
Wednesday I finished a long essay I’d been working on for a while, and immediately went for a bike ride, with a great feeling of satisfaction.
The essay was still a rough draft. In the old days, that meant it was written in longhand on pages torn from a yellow legal pad. After days of tweaking, I would type it up and then send it out.
Now, my rough draft is always typed, of course, but single-spaced. When it’s as good as I can make it, I click on the tool bar and make it double-spaced. It's the final, cosmetic act that makes it ready to go out into the world.