Fuller Alexandra - The best American travel writing. 2019

Copyright 2019 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

Introduction copyright 2019 by Alexandra Fuller

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ISSN 15301516 (print) ISSN 2537-4830 (e-book)

ISBN 9780-358094234 (print) ISBN 978-0-358-09426-5 (e-book)

Cover design by Christopher Moisan Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Cover photograph Ed Freeman / Getty Images

Fuller photograph Tig

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Overlooking Guantnamo by Stephen Benz. First published in New England Review, vol. 39.4. Copyright 2018 by Stephen Benz. Reprinted by permission of Stephen Benz.

The Great Divide by Maddy Crowell. First published in Harpers Magazine, March 2018. Copyright 2018 by Maddy Crowell. Reprinted by permission of Maddy Crowell.

Uncomfortable Silences: A Walk in Myanmar by David Fettling. First published in Longreads, March 28, 2018. Copyright 2018 by David Fettling. Reprinted by permission of David Fettling.

Finished by Alice Gregory. First published in The New Yorker, October 8, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Alice Gregory. Reprinted by permission of Alice Gregory.

How the Chile Pepper Took Over the World by Matt Gross. First published in Airbnb Magazine, Winter 2018. Copyright 2018 by Matt Gross. Reprinted by permission of Matt Gross.

I Walked from Selma to Montgomery by Rahawa Haile. First published in Buzzfeed, April 1, 2018. Copyright 2018 by BuzzFeed, Inc. Reprinted by permission of BuzzFeed, Inc.

Morsi the Cat by Peter Hessler. First published in The New Yorker, May 7, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Peter Hessler. Reprinted by permission of Peter Hessler.

A Visit to Chernobyl: Travel in the Postapocalypse by Cameron Hewitt. First published in Rick Steves Europe, November 20, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Cameron Hewitt. Reprinted by permission of Cameron Hewitt.

Paper Tiger by Brooke Jarvis. First published in The New Yorker, July 2, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Brooke Jarvis. Reprinted by permission of Brooke Jarvis.

Keepers of the Jungle by Saki Knafo. First published in Travel + Leisure, July 2018. Copyright 2018 by Saki Knafo. Reprinted by permission of Saki Knafo.

Mother Tongue by Lucas Loredo. First published in Oxford American, Summer 2018. Copyright 2018 by Lucas Loredo. Reprinted by permission of Lucas Loredo and The Oxford American.

Is This the Most Crowded Island in the World? (And Why That Question Matters) by Alex MacGregor. First published in Longreads, February 19, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Alex MacGregor. Reprinted by permission of Alex MacGregor and Longreads.

Taming the Lionfish by Jeff MacGregor. First published in Smithsonian, June 2018. Copyright 2018 by Jeff MacGregor. Reprinted by permission of Jeff MacGregor.

If These Walls Could Talk by Lauren Markham. First published in Harpers Magazine, March 2018. Copyright 2018 by Lauren Markham. Reprinted by permission of Lauren Markham.

The Floating World by Ben Mauk. First published in The New York Times Magazine, April 1, 2018. Copyright 2018 The New York Times. Reprinted by permission.

Irmageddon by Devon ONeil. First published in Outside Magazine, April 2018. Copyright 2018 by Devon ONeil. Reprinted by permission of Devon ONeil.

Water and the Wall by Nick Paumgarten. First published in The New Yorker, April 23, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Nick Paumgarten. Reprinted by permission of Nick Paumgarten.

How Nashville Became One Big Bachelorette Party by Anne Helen Petersen. First published in Buzzfeed, March 29, 2018. Copyright 2018 by BuzzFeed, Inc. Reprinted by permission of BuzzFeed, Inc.

These Brazilians Traveled 18 Hours on a Riverboat to Vote. I Went With Them by Shannon Sims. First published in Pacific Standard, Oct 26, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Shannon Sims. Reprinted by permission of Shannon Sims.

Cursed Fields by Noah Sneider. First published in Harpers Magazine, April 2018. Copyright 2018 by Noah Sneider. Reprinted by permission of Noah Sneider.

The End of the Line by William T. Vollmann. First published in Smithsonian, October 2018. Copyright 2018 by William T. Vollmann. Reprinted by permission of Writers House LLC.

The Greatest by Jason Wilson. First published in The Washington Post Magazine, March 18, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Jason Wilson. Reprinted by permission of Jason Wilson.

Tributary by Jessica Yen. First published in Fourth Genre, vol. 20.2. Copyright 2018 by Jessica Yen. Reprinted by permission of Jessica Yen.

Tourist Trap by Jianying Zha. First published in The New Yorker, December 24 & 31, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Jianying Zha. Reprinted by permission of Jianying Zha.

This is the 20th year of The Best American Travel Writing, and in those two decades of sifting through the thousands of articles, essays, dispatches, and reports, I figured Id seen just about everything in the realm of travel storytelling. Then I received my September 23, 2018, copy of the New York Times Magazine. This was the magazines fall Voyages Issue, its special twice-a-year travel-themed edition, which more than once in the past has featured a piece that has ended up in this anthology.

In this particular Voyages Issue, not a single sentence of travel narrative appeared. Nearly all the pages in the print edition were given over to large photographs from various locations around the world, each with a number. Those numbers corresponded to a soundtrack, available online, and each marked a recording of unique sounds in the particular place shown in the photo. In the issues opening explanatory essay, Kim Tingley writes, Paradoxically, the photographs on the following pages, accompanied by the recordings, are fixed. They are defined by the page, whereas sound has no similar boundary. We see them in the present tense, but we listen (always, but doubly so with recordings) to the past.

Readers, like me, listened to audio of hot lava pouring from an active volcano in Hawaii; the piercing cries of male and female indris, the largest living lemurs in Madagascar; the high-pitched conversations of New York City sewer rats; the cracking of the earth in the Atacama Desert of Chile; the bustle of a bus station in Lagos, Nigeria; the buzz of a coral reef in the US Virgin Islands. Some of the sounds were startling: Who knew that hot lava sounded like breaking glass? Who knew that coral reefs sounded like bacon sizzling in a pan? Who knew what rat laughter sounded like? The whole experience was entirely engrossing.

Yet for a travel writer, the exercise itself was likely more disturbing than even the rat laughter. The photographs may have been fixed in the present tense and the audio in the past, but the words were absent from both present and past. It didnt take a pessimist to understand the suggestion of what the future of travel publishing may look like, too.