I often receive letters asking how to break in to travel writing. "I love to travel," they generally begin, "and want to share my experiences.... "
There's no easy way to answer the question or to clearly describe this profession. What little has been written about practitioners of the craft is decidedly uncomplimentary.
"What's Become of Waring?" a little lark of a satire written in the 1930s by English novelist Anthony Powell, begins with the sudden death of a famous travel writer who signs his books T.T. Waring, more an alias than a nom de plume for this scoundrel and plagiarist.
As the story unfolds, the reader learns that he has faked his death to keep eager readers from expecting future books by Waring. That's because he has just married a rich widow and no longer needs to write for a living.
Anne Tyler's 1985 novel, "The Accidental Tourist," is also about a travel writer but this one hates to travel. Her Macon Leary writes guidebooks that assist businessmen in moving about the world in an insulated bubble. Between research trips, Leary is a sad-sack couch potato, desperately in need of the psychological shake-up Tyler gives him in the novel.
Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner and Rob Sitch wrote a sendup of travel guidebooks that was published two years ago, "Molvania: A Land Untouched by Modern Dentistry," featuring a made-up country and authors. These included Philippe Miseree, a professional traveler who finds every destination he visits "not half as good as it was in the 1970s," and Andy "the Animal" Wilson, whose first trip overseas ended with a prison term for setting fire to a monk in Bali.
Such is the rogues' gallery of travel writers in literature. In reality, they aren't all charlatans and criminals, but they are an odd lot.
Most of them -- myself included -- have scant preparation and back into the profession, which is an illegitimate child in the world of the letters. There's no graduate program culminating in a master of travel arts degree. Journalists consider it frivolous and easy. Poets and novelists look at it as slumming.
The glamour tends to wear off for those who make travel writing an occupation. It sounds wonderful to fly off to Tahiti or Paris to research a story. But consider the joys of jet lag, sightseeing when you have diarrhea, rental car accidents, the occasional mugging.
