Travel writing: A literary genre
Today I was thrilled to get in the mail my copy of Poets & Writers Magazine (aff link), as it is one of the very few print subscriptions I have maintained over the years. I usually read the articles over a period of a week or two. But tonight, being a lazy Saturday night, I decided to dive in early.
One article in particular caught my eye – an article about travel writing. I was intrigued because I love to write (obviously), and I also love to travel. While I have never combined the two and written articles about my travels, it remains one of those elusive dreams to get paid as a globe-trotting writer.
The article makes a few really good points. The first point that jumped out is that travel writing is not the same thing as writing guidebooks (ie. those destination guides you pick up at the newsstand at your airport). Rather, travel writing provides a narrative of your journey and contains all the elements of a story (beginning, middle, end, etc).
The second point the article makes is that writing a travel narrative is much harder than it looks. While this is true with most writing, I think it applies a lot to travel writing because when you do read a good yarn, it reads like it was written in less then an hour. Part of the beauty of travel writing lays in its simplicity.
The final point the article makes, and the one that really jumped out at me, was the declaration that travel writing can be a literary genre. The distinction, as the article puts it, comes down to narrative vs. service. The article continues:
At the heart of this division are questions of intent: Is the purpose of the piece of writing to help the reader plan a vacation? Or is it to probe the human condition? Is it a service to the reader, or is it a form of art? Can it be both?" (P&W Nov/Dec 2008, pg 67).
This gets to the heart of a large misconception of travel writing: That it is meant only to help the reader plan their next vacation. But it can also be so much more. An article can be written, for example, about a trip going horribly wrong, detailing strange characters met along the way, the culture of the area and how that plays into the writer’s misfortune. In other words, a good travel article can teach something more than just what hotel to stay at and what hole-in-the-wall restaurant to avoid.
Hmm, probing the human condition? Interesting and colorful characters? Misunderstood cultures? That sounds very much like something we read every day – literature!
This post provides a very simplistic version of the Poets & Writers article. I only plucked out what I thought were some good points. I highly recommend buying a copy of the current issue and reading the article for yourself. That way, the next time someone introduces themselves as a travel writer, you won’t think they just write guidebooks all day.
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