
Is Travel Writing Dead? - Thevet
https://granta.com/is-travel-writing-dead-dyer/
======
pjc50
Three problems:

1) There's very little money for writers anymore, except the extremely
successful

2) Travel _writing_ golden age was when the world was exotic and hard to visit
- but now we're saturated in travel TV, cheap flights, blogging and especially
Instagram posts. If you want to see what the world looks like somewhere, you
can get a pretty good idea from the internet. VR tourism if it happens will
only make this worse.

3) Finally, globalisation has worn down the exoticness of places. Everywhere
has a McDonald's. And we're heading into a time when the pendulum of public
opinion has swung against the foreign. How can you sell travel writing to a
Brexit market?

(The author has reminded me of Patrick Leigh Fermor, whose _Words of Mercury_
I need to finish.)

~~~
Drumlin
> How can you sell travel writing to a Brexit market?

I think you misunderstand Brexit and other similar movements. People are
pushing back at the technical homogenisation caused by that full force of
globalisation. These movements are, in my opinion, a subconscious fight
against the harshness of technical progress.

If countries focus on their local and national communities once more, they can
rediscover culture and the uniqueness of their existence - the sort of
authentic experience that tourists crave when they travel thousands of miles.
In a way, it's a possible solution to point number three.

~~~
pjc50
Could you elaborate on "technical homogenisation" please?

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edblarney
It's not just technical - it's cultural.

The world is becoming culturally globalized and less diverse.

There were about 50 languages spoken in France 100 years ago.

In Nice, many people used to speak 'Nicoise'. In Nice, the old street signs
are bilingual: French and Nicoise.

In Monaco they used to speak 'Monegasque'.

Breton in Brittany.

But most of it has given way to French.

The same thing all over the world.

The 'Starbucksization' of the world is happening quickly.

I was in Tunisia a couple of years ago, my father was there in the 1970's. In
1970, people wore those long white 'robe-like' shirts, i.e. North African
garb. Today - nobody under 40 wears that, it's all jeans and t-shirts (cheap
Chinese knock-offs of popular brands), crazy haircuts (copying footballers).
You could take a young Tunisian out of Tunis and plop him down in NYC and he
would not stand out. 40 years ago, they would have stood right out.

~~~
Pamar
Yeah - this is something I have noticed too: if someone blindfolded me, took
me on a plane and removed the blindfold after depositing me in a random
capital, in the heart of the main shopping area... it will be almost
impossible for me to guess where I am. It will have: Benetton, Starbucks,
Lego, an Apple store, Muji, Zara, Nike...

At best I could guess if I am in Europe (Tiger?) or in Asia (Kanji/Hanzi
interspersed with the main logos).

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jhbadger
I get the complaint, but some of those cliched "In the footsteps of..." books
are actually pretty good. I recently read Douglas Mack's "Europe on Five Wrong
Turns A Day", in which the author tries to visit Europe in the modern day
using a 1963 copy of Arthur Frommer's classic "Europe on Five Dollars a Day".
It wasn't just the obvious "things are more expensive now", but really about
how the whole idea of travel is so different from in the 1960s.

~~~
ryanlol
>It wasn't just the obvious "things are more expensive now"

Doesn't seem obvious at all, five 1960 dollars is around 40 2017 dollars. 40
dollars per day can be a plenty.

~~~
icebraining
Sure, but the author was eating three course dinners in Paris and staying in
sunny hotels in Florence with those $5 a day. Try doing that with $40
nowadays.

The difference is, of course, mostly in the rates between the dollar and the
European currencies, rather than simply an increase in costs locally.

~~~
trendia
> mostly in the rates between the dollar and European currencies

I think this might be true in some countries -- it used to be way cheaper to
go to countries in Eastern Europe before they joined the Euro. But I believe
that Germany and France would have always been rather expensive since they had
rather strong currencies.

As far as the Euro is concerned, USD / Eur is the highest it's been in 10
years [0].

[0]
[http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=EUR&view=10Y](http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=EUR&view=10Y)

~~~
icebraining
The book was written in the mid-50s, back in the days of the Bretton Woods
system, and barely a decade after WW2.

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laurentdc
Meh, it seems to me that vlogging is the new travel writing. YouTube has
plenty of channels of people travelling the world and telling stories with
their GoPro.

They're using videos on a social platform instead of text and photographs on a
book. It's just a medium change, to allow for quicker consumption and to
engage more with the viewers I guess.

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VLM
In the pre-internet era travel was a code word for open mindedness toward
other cultures. A fairly standard trope in travel writing was freaking out the
reader to a perfectly acceptable level at the time of writing. This is
obsolete today. Due to globalism we're moving our culture over there to
replace theirs and moving their people over here to replace ours. Open
mindedness is seen as wrong, "no platforming", utter intolerance toward
anything non-progressive and if they're equally progressive over there,
there's nothing new to experience there. People who would have found travel
interesting in 1970 when I was young now experience unusual non mainstream
cultures by visiting various 4chan boards and looking for people who still use
the N-word in 2017, or who go camping, or are NEETs.

What travel as a verb still happens in 2017 is now about western style
decadence or social signalling and both are heavily organized. If you want
decadence you read the resort reviews about how good the all inclusive drinks
are and proximity to nude beaches and dance clubs and such, its all heavily
organized and indexed and sorted and CRUD-app-ified. Who wants to read a book
about a quirky end user scrolling thru yelp or airbnb? If you want social
signalling, perhaps you need that trip to Africa for volun-tour-ism for that
ivy league application, you contact people who organize that from top to
bottom, social signalling has been pretty well product-ized.

Some of the death of old style travel writing is the death of optimism. Sure
my grandpa was one of the few who could go to Scotland for a month with my
grandma, it was semi-realistic to afford for joe 6 pack. The days of the
middle class ever being able to afford that are long gone along with the
optimism; retirement means if you economically and physically survive the
medical industrial complex, you get cat food and ramen at best, not a semi-
realistic a trip to Scotland. When people are banned from an activity its
human nature to claim to stop desiring it until it becomes real; millennials
are too poor live in the burbs, they've been totally screwed over; response,
we never wanted to live there anyway nah na nah na na. Plus or minus some
gaslighting by people with a bridge to sell to suckas. Permanent decline in
standard of living means you'll never travel internationally except maybe as a
refugee, natural human response, I never wanted to anyway, not gonna read the
book extolling the virtues and excitement of travel, etc.

~~~
edblarney
Even though there is a lot of truth in your comments, I know a lot of people
to 'travel' and they do it rather normally. No instagrams. Just regular
travel.

"Permanent decline in standard of living means you'll never travel
internationally"

This is total rubbish. People are travelling way, way more than ever before.

I live in Montreal, one of the poorest metro areas in North America and the
'millenials' here travel a LOT. They prioritize it a little more than other
things, and it's easily affordable. Travel is cheaper and more accessible than
ever.

~~~
VLM
I agree with your comments in that I missed a major theme which is the sub
culture of people who read books, the vast middle class plain old Joe 6 pack
American, HN readers which are a very peculiar subgroup of the population but
mistakenly think they typical, and finally the population of people still
wealthy enough to travel don't seem to have much overlap anymore. At one point
lots of joe 6 packs read books and a nice book about visiting the home land of
Ireland sounds like a nice amount of adventure and was semi-realistic enough
to consider, not so much anymore.

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morgante
Travel 'writing' as a literary exercise might be dead, but travel blogging as
a professional pursuit is in its heyday thanks to credit cards. Sites like
OMAAT[0] or TPG[1] make great revenue off writing about the practical aspects
of travel (planes, hotels, etc.) and referring people for credit cards. This
is enough to subsidize plenty of "traditional" destination blogging as well.

If you want to do travel writing, learn a little about credit cards first.

[0]
[http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/](http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/)
[1] [https://thepointsguy.com/](https://thepointsguy.com/)

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coldtea
> _(...) certain titles enjoy a reputation as ‘travel’ classics while falling
> way below more general standards of literary achievement. Patrick Leigh
> Fermor’s A Time of Gifts depends on these standards being dispensed with
> entirely._

Say what? If anything, it's the inverse.

Most travel best sellers are trite. Fermor's writing is with the best of them,
and not confined to travel writing at all.

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cheriot
Yes, it's largely dead. Killed by the same economics that are killing most
writing niches. It's either a paid advertisement, the writer never went, or
it's sensational to the point of misrepresenting the subject (so you'll think
the author is awesome and subscribe to email updates).

There's a handful of valuable sources left. roadsandkingdoms.com is one good
one.

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mycall
I just want to point out that there are many other forms of travel writing.
Epic, aimless, business building, scientific inquiry, collection gathering,
family business, enlightenment, etc. Reductionism tends to sell everyone
short.

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Existenceblinks
It would rather be boring and real dead if the travel writing wasn't dead. It
will make you feel like something being unfinished while it should be.

What if we _ideally_ discover all routes that human want to know. What would
happen next after we all have been there - the edge of galaxy. Is life going
to be such boredom or we would find yet another dimension to explore? I don't
know, _that unknown_ actually makes me excited to explore next.

My 3rd world country is just way far behind westerners in this travel stories
scene, it is just in hype state and ads content networking shit is going on
around. Please lets finish this scene and move on.

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hprotagonist
"The places in-between", and other works by rory stewart, are modern and
excellent.

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Overtonwindow
I say no. If you've never read Bill Bryson, you're missing out on a unique
perspective of travel writing. It's not so much the locations but the personal
narrative that I enjoy.

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imranq
There's a book series called 'America's Best Writing" each year for science,
literature, etc. There's also one for travel which is really good.

~~~
Pamar
I tried to google for _America 's Best Writing_ but nothing substantial came
out. Can you please help me finding more about this series?

~~~
tedmiston
I think OP is referring to this series:

 _The Best American Travel Writing 2006 (The Best American Series)_
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0618582150/ref=mp_s_a_1_11?ie...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0618582150/ref=mp_s_a_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1486950410)

We read these in a travel writing class I took in college. Each book is a
collection of top stories from that year organized by the editor and there are
subseries as well.

Edit: Found the official site. Don't be misled by the pricing. Slightly used
copies can be picked up for next to nothing. Highly recommended.

[https://www.hmhco.com/at-home/featured-shops/popular-
series/...](https://www.hmhco.com/at-home/featured-shops/popular-series/best-
american-series/ba-travel)

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idlewords
No.

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jordache
crazyguyonabike, the thousands of travel blogs, podcasts, youtube, instagram.

The travel narrative is pretty alive and strong these days

