First Batch of Travel-Writing Notes, from Greater Nowheres

Well, at this point, I thought it would probably be beneficial for me to collect some thoughts on the reading I’ve been doing for my IS up to this point and to reflect on said reading for a bit. First of all, what is it that makes this book “travel writing” and not some other form of writing. Well, first of all the authors are in a place that is not their own place of residence, or even very familiar to them. That strangeness or unfamiliarity forms one of the fundamental tensions in the book. All along the way, the authors have to comport themselves as learners, those who are not particularly comfortable or successful in the setting they find themselves in. It is vital that the authors let us see their blunders, their weaknesses, because that is one of the reasons that this book is something that we can identify with the experience of traveling, that sense of being off-balance. Secondly, one of the main elements in the book is the authors’ experiences of meeting and talking too people. Basically, they seem to be very well connected in Oz, in terms of meeting people that send them on to meet other people and so forth. I don’t know how they manage, striking up conversations and knowing what to say to all types of people, to battered little bush-wives to burly fishermen and croc hunters. This, I think is a large part of what makes their book interesting, and that is something that worries me, because I always have such a hard time talking to people that I don’t already know. But honestly, so much of the content of the book is focused on the people they meet as they travel, so apparently this is a skill I may have to cultivate in order to become a decent travel writer. Another thing which kind of surprised me in reading this book was the authors’ use of past experience in the narrative where appropriate. When I think about it, it makes perfect sense that this would be an acceptable practice, especially because it helps the reader to understand why a particular incident is especially meaningful to the author, as well as humanize the author so they are actually seen to have a past, and not just be a talking head about random things in the Outback. But even so, I just never would have considered including things like that without having read it. I think the candidness of the authors’, as was previously alluded to, is one of the things that makes this book engaging and fluid in its presentation. But at the same time, it is important to note how much of the actual experience is left out of the narrative. It must be very important in travel writing to be selective, because there is just such a high volume of stuff that happens that you simply can’t put it all into a form that people will want to read it (speaking of forms, I’ve been brainstorming different kinds that I could work with, besides just this kind of straight-forward narrative one that I’ve been reading). So, that would be just about all the advice I’ve gleaned from Finklestein and London for the moment.