The Best American Travel Writing 2011 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Introduction

  My Monet Moment

  Southern Culture on the Skids

  The Coconut Salesman

  Venance Lafrance Is Not Dead

  My Year at Sea

  A Girls' Guide to Saudi Arabia

  The Last Stand of Free Town

  Stuck

  Famous

  The Vanishing Point

  Reservations

  Aligning the Internal Compass

  The Last Inuit of Quebec

  Twilight of the Vampires

  A Year of Birds

  Moscow on the Med

  A Head for the Emir

  Miami Party Boom

  End Matter

  Contributors' Notes

  Notable Travel Writing of 2010

  Footnotes

  Copyright © 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

  Introduction copyright © 2010 by Sloane Crosley

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  The Best American Series® is a registered trademark of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  Publishing Company. The Best American Travel Writing™ is a trademark of Houghton

  Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,

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  information storage or retrieval system without the proper written permission of

  the copyright owner unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright

  law. With the exception of nonprofit transcription in Braille, Houghton Mifflin

  Harcourt is not authorized to grant permission for further uses of copyrighted

  selections reprinted in this book without the permission of their owners. Permission

  must be obtained from the individual copyright owners as identified herein. Address

  requests for permission to make copies of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt material to

  Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue

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  www.hmhbooks.com

  ISSN 1530-1516

  ISBN 978-0-547-33336-6

  "My Monet Moment" by André Aciman. First published in Condé Nast Traveler,

  September 2010. Copyright © 2010 by André 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 Harper's Magazine. All rights reserved. Reproduced

  from the October issue by special permission.

  "The Coconut Salesman" by David Baez. First published in The New York Times

  Magazine, 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 Men's

  Journal, June/July 2010. Copyright © Men's Journal LLC 2010. All rights reserved.

  Reprinted by permission of Men's 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 York

  Times Magazine, March 28, 2010. Copyright © 2010 by Verlyn Klinkenborg. Re-

  printed 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, Janu-

  ary 7, 2010. Copyright © 2010 by Justin Nobel. Reprinted by permission of the au-

  thor. 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 Téa Obreht. Copy

  right © 2010 by Harper's Magazine. All rights reserved. Reproduced from the No-

  vember issue by special permission.

  "A Year of Birds" by Annie Proulx. First published in Harper's 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 Harper's 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.

  Foreword

  Find a place. Write about it. It's the fundamental premise of all travel writing—the 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 course—competing with Ballroom Dancing or Wine Tasting—and it attracts a mix of undergraduates of various majors, some who've spent intense periods of study abroad, and others who rarely leave their neighborhood in Philadelphia.

  Whether they've 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 Buford—all of whom I make the
m 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 don't 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, aren't 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 they've 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 else's?" 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.

  The other students, the ones who've usually never traveled much farther than the Jersey shore, or Florida, or perhaps Cancún, usually begin with more reticence and apprehension, prefacing their essays by saying, "Well, I've never really traveled anywhere." I always try to quell their fears by saying, "Good travel writing can be about anywhere. You can write a great essay about your own neighborhood. It all depends on your approach." This, of course, is another truth I learn every year in compiling my selections of notable travel writing for the year.

  So can travel writing actually be taught? Perhaps, and perhaps not.

  Surprisingly, few of my students have any expectations of publishing what they write, which makes this course very different from the fiction or poetry workshops or journalism classes I've been involved with. Certainly, some do begin class by asking, "How can I get a job as a travel writer?" I quickly answer this question by explaining the shiftless, nomadic, seat-of-the-pants life that many travel writers lead (which predictably holds little appeal for this achievement-driven generation). Then I follow with the true and sad tale of how magazines are publishing less and less quality travel writing (something that makes the job of putting together this anthology harder every year). With issues of commerce out of the way, we simply write and read about one another's travels.

  So why teach travel writing, then, in this age when travel writing has a declining presence? And why do students continue to take the course? Perhaps the real measure of success is whether or not these students sharpen their critical eye, learning to look for the sorts of fascinating or idiosyncratic or unexpected or profound moments and experiences that make travel (and life) more meaningful. Meaningful travel (as well as a meaningful life) is, of course, open to all of us. Writing about that travel in a way that resonates with readers? Well, that's something else altogether. But that's what we aim for in travel writing class.

  And that's what this collection of fabulous writing aims for, and delivers.

  The stories included here are, as always, selected from among hundreds of pieces in hundreds of diverse publications—from mainstream and specialty magazines to Sunday newspaper travel sections to literary journals to travel websites. I've done my best to be fair and representative, and in my opinion the best travel stories from 2010 were forwarded to Sloane Crosley, who made our final selections.

  I now begin anew by reading the hundreds of stories published in 2011. I am once again asking editors and writers to submit the best of whatever it is they define as travel writing. These submissions must be nonfiction, published in the United States during the 2011 calendar year. They must not be reprints or excerpts from published books. They must include the author's name, date of publication, and publication name, and must be tear sheets, the complete publication, or a clear photocopy of the piece as it originally appeared. I must receive all submissions by January 1, 2012, in order to ensure their full consideration for the next collection.

  Further, publications that want to make certain their contributions will be considered for the next edition should be sure to include this anthology on their subscription list. Submissions or subscriptions should be sent to Jason Wilson, Drexel University, 3210 Cherry Street, 2nd floor, Philadelphia, PA 19104.

  Working with the talented Sloane Crosley this year was wonderful and refreshing. Her choices make a unique book that will take fans of the series down fascinating new paths. I am also grateful to Nicole Angeloro and Jesse Smith for their help on this, our twelfth edition of The Best American Travel Writing.

  JASON WILSON

  Introduction

  TEN YEARS AGO, This American Life devoted an entire episode to "kid logic." From start to finish, it featured more adorable moments per square inch than the state of Wisconsin has cheese wheels. A spiffed-up-for-the-NPR-audience version of Kids Say the Darndest Things, the episode went a bit deeper in exploring how children view and process the world around them. Included is a brief interview with a child psychologist that doesn't amount to more than a minute of airtime, but you can see why Ira Glass included it then and, I hope, why I include it here now. See, there's this four-year-old girl on her first flight ever. As the plane takes off, she turns to the woman next to her and says, with the utmost sincerity: When do we get smaller? Until that moment, her only experience of airplanes was watching them disappear into the sky. I remember listening to this in my car as I pulled up to visit my parents, who still inhabit my childhood home. I turned the radio off and cut the engine. I looked out over our modest square suburban yard, recalling how unexotic I found Westchester to be as a child. Most of me was charmed by the This American Life story as I was meant to be charmed—but I felt a twinge of melancholy upon hearing it as well. Not because of the poignant moments in which children learn about the world, moments that come barreling at them through space like meteors of reality. But because sometimes imagination comes from a place not of pure delight but of pure boredom. At least that's what suburbia was for me. People with oceans and deserts and wild streams for backyards were surely better off. They had the luxury of spending less time conjuring and more time befriending actual whales.

  Furthermore, I assumed that Westchester dully pulsated with this blandness for everyone, visitor or native. Then one day during high school an old camp friend from New Zealand paid me a visit. She pointed to the perfectly boring tree under which I had just parked my car, alongside our perfectly boring driveway, and screamed at the top of her lungs, "Oh my God, what is that thing?"

  Surely, I remember thinking, they have trees in New Zealand.

  "That!" She pushed her finger harder into the air.

  There was a squirrel pinned, mid-chase with another squirrel, to the side of an oak tree. Its squirrel talons clung to the bark, its black tail fluffed up and protruded at a right angle toward the two of us. The thing of it is, she actually was witnessing something rare: black squirrels exist in limited pockets in the Northeast and Midwest. My parents' front yard happens to be located in one of those pockets. But it was this whole new animal that awed her. She had never seen anything like it, and yet it certainly wasn't on her list of "things to explore in America." She stealthily exited the car and began taking pictures.

  This is why we travel. Oh yes, that's right: to see rats with fluffy tails. We travel to discover what we don't know, to get away from what we know too well. We seek out the unexpected. That's the deal we made when we asked our neighbors to take in the mail and headed for the airport. These days we also travel with the hope of leaving our phones unanswered and our e-mail logged out of. With so much thorough planning, so many suggested trip highligh
ts and firsthand accounts available at our fingertips, the unexpected is of greater value than ever. It's a pure shot of experience.

  As we grow up, most real experience is increasingly hindered by two factors. One is the infamous prism of our own perspective (the real terrain of exploration is seldom external). I would argue that the second, equally intuitive but less discussed obstacle has to do with a kind of virginity of the mind. We can only learn something—I mean really be introduced to it—once. Hence the incredible shrinking airplanes and the black squirrels. Hence the explorers and the travel guides and the carefully allotted weeks of vacations to places we've never been and likely will never go again. I will say now that I have been to Puerto Rico three times in my life and won't be returning. Because Puerto Rico is a terrible place? Well, it ain't Bali, but no, that's not why. It's because of the other 30 percent of the planet Earth covered in landmass. I have the one life and the one brain to match it, and I'd rather not waste either on knowing a foreign locale like the back of my hand unless the front of my hand is signing a lease there.

  Perhaps this seems fickle or limiting or just rings false. If we were discussing people instead of places, no one in their right mind would suggest that a series of casual friendships are more ideal than a handful of deep relationships. To get the most out of any relationship, I have to take off my coat and stay a while. But travel is different. I have seen other humans before. I get the general idea of what one might look like. But I have never spent a year at sea like Christopher Buckley (coat required, a warm one) or journeyed to the wild and endangered terrain of Australia's "Top End" like Verlyn Klinkenborg. And I have really never gone on a bowhead whale hunt in Quebec with Justin Nobel. That I think I would have remembered.

  In reading the nearly one hundred essays narrowed from the numerous excellent pieces of travel writing published last year, I found myself most drawn to those whose authors, simply put, went because I couldn't. This is not a prerequisite for the foreign or the expensive—I suppose if I really wanted to visit Bristol Motor Speedway and try to explore the decline of NASCAR like Ben Austen in "Southern Culture on the Skids," I could give it a shot. But there's no way I'd make it around the track with the same brand of skillful insight unique to Austen. So there I sat in my armchair (no, really, it's blue and has a throw pillow), where I relied on him and seventeen other literary witnesses to be my eyes and ears. The tales of their experiences were so intoxicating because I felt as if I were with them, along for the ride as they employed a combination of cultural absorption and opinion. They opened up new means of thinking in their own brains and dragged me through the portal with them. There is much to be said for staking out a foreign spot as your own, but like I said: the nature of the world is that it will provide that valuable introductory course only once. Each of these essays reads like a remarkably successful social experiment, an answer to the question of what happens when you take a handful of the country's most talented writers and show them something they don't know.