Wilson - The Best American Travel Writing 2011: The Best American Series

Copyright 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
Introduction copyright 2010 by Sloane Crosley

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ISSN 1530-1516
ISBN 978-0-547-33336-6

e ISBN 978-0-547-67848-1
v3.1214

My Monet Moment by Andr Aciman. First published in Cond Nast Traveler, September 2010. Copyright 2010 by Andr Aciman. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Southern Culture on the Skids: Racetracks, Rebels and the Decline of NASCAR by Ben Austen. Copyright 2010 by Harpers Magazine. All rights reserved. Reproduced from the October issue by special permission.

The Coconut Salesman by David Baez. First published in The New York TimesMagazine, June 25, 2010. Copyright 2010 by David Baez. Reprinted by permission of David Baez.

Venance Lafrance Is Not Dead by Mischa Berlinski. First published in MensJournal, June/July 2010. Copyright Mens Journal LLC 2010. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Mens Journal LLC.

My Year at Sea by Christopher Buckley. First published in The Atlantic, December 2010. Copyright 2011 by Christopher Buckley. Reprinted by permission of Christopher Buckley.

A Girls Guide to Saudi Arabia by Maureen Dowd. First published in Vanity Fair, August 2010. Copyright 2010 by Maureen Dowd. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Last Stand of Free Town by Porter Fox. First published in The Believer, June 2010. Copyright 2010 by Porter Fox. Reprinted by permission of Porter Fox.

Stuck by Keith Gessen. First published in The New Yorker, August 2, 2010. Copyright 2010 by Keith Gessen. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Famous by Tom Ireland. First published in The Missouri Review, Spring 2010. Copyright 2011 by Tom Ireland. Reprinted by permission of Tom Ireland.

The Vanishing Point by Verlyn Klinkenborg. First published in The New YorkTimes Magazine, March 28, 2010. Copyright 2010 by Verlyn Klinkenborg. Reprinted by permission of The New York Times.

Reservations by Ariel Levy. First published in The New Yorker, December 13, 2010. Copyright 2010 by Ariel Levy. Reprinted by permission of The New Yorker.

Aligning the Internal Compass by Jessica McCaughey. First published in Colo-rado Review, Spring 2010. Copyright 2010 by Jessica McCaughey. Reprinted by permission of Jessica McCaughey.

The Last Inuit of Quebec by Justin Nobel. First published in The Smart Set, January 7, 2010. Copyright 2010 by Justin Nobel. Reprinted by permission of the author. Excerpt from page 480, Volume 5, is from Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 5: Arctic by William C. Sturtevant and David Damas, Smithsonian (National Museum of Natural History).

Twilight of the Vampires: Hunting the Real-Life Undead by Ta Obreht. Copyright 2010 by Harpers Magazine. All rights reserved. Reproduced from the November issue by special permission.

A Year of Birds by Annie Proulx. First published in Harpers Magazine, December 2010. Reprinted with the permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., from Bird Cloud: A Memoir by Annie Proulx. Copyright 2011 by Dead Line, Ltd. All rights reserved.

Moscow on the Med by Gary Shteyngart. First published in Travel + Leisure, March 2010. Copyright 2010 by Gary Shteyngart. Reprinted by permission of Denise Shannon Literary Agency, Inc.

A Head for the Emir: Travels in Iraqi Kurdistan by William T. Vollmann. Copyright 2010 by Harpers Magazine. All rights reserved. Reproduced from the April issue by special permission.

Miami Party Boom by Emily Witt. First published in N + 1, April 23, 2010. Copyright 2010 by Emily Witt. Reprinted by permission of N + 1 and the author.

Find a place. Write about it. Its the fundamental premise of all travel writingthe most basic of writing exercises, and yet arguably one of the most important. Unfortunately, many readers introduction to travel writing begins and ends with guidebooks or service-oriented, what-to-see, what-to-do, how-much-will-it-cost articles. While these forms of writing are certainly useful and have their place, great travel writing aspires to be more than just rote information and a list of bed-and-breakfasts and restaurants. When something human is recorded, good travel writing happens, writes Paul Theroux. Hopefully, you too will aspire to this maxim, and work to improve your powers of observation, description, and storytelling along the way.

This rather dogmatic passage is taken from the syllabus of the travel writing workshop that I teach each year at my university. As you might imagine, Travel Writing is a popular coursecompeting with Ballroom Dancing or Wine Tastingand it attracts a mix of undergraduates of various majors, some whove spent intense periods of study abroad, and others who rarely leave their neighborhood in Philadelphia.

Whether theyve traveled widely or not, none of the students have read very much travel writing outside of perhaps a Lonely Planet guidebook. None of them usually have heard of Paul Theroux or Pico Iyer or Simon Winchester or Bill Bufordall of whom I make them read, sometimes to their chagrin. The students who may have heard of Eat Pray Love or Under the Tuscan Sun usually know them as movies rather than books, and only a handful nod in vague recognition when I mention On the Road.

Most students dont take my travel writing class, then, because of the writing or because they want to be Jack Kerouac; they take it because their first travels, alone and away from home and school, just may be the most visceral experiences of their young lives so far. Writing might be one way to make sense of it. College students, lest we forget, arent all that far removed from the What I Did on My Summer Vacation essays of middle school.

As we gather around the seminar table with their essays, the study-abroad students are always the boldest, sharing (often with TMI) the very recent experiences theyve just returned from (only weeks ago in some cases). These are often ribald tales of hostels and drinking and romantic trysts. Often enough, though, a flicker of insight or an eye-opening moment of reflection appears. I always encourage them to think about their youthful adventures with as much distance as possible, and to fit their personal stories into the context of the place. Why are you telling me this story? I ask them. What makes this your trip and no one elses? The best of my students have a winning voice, one that makes the whole class take notice. What I ask in class, then, are the same things I ask of the essays each year as I read for this anthology.