The Best American Travel Writing 2005

Review by Tim Leffel

I really wanted to like The Best American Travel Writing 2005 book. In past years this series has been edited by the likes of Bill Bryson and Pico Iyer and I’ve discovered a lot of gems in those books. I looked forward to lazing around in a hammock on my vacation, reading tales of wonder and adventure. Alas, despite the perfect environment and plenty of time on my hands, slogging through this collection was too often about as much fun as taking a Friday night seminar class in college.

The unfortunate truth is that “best” is always in the eye of the beholder, but this time more than others. Editor Jamaica Kincaid says of the stories featured, “…they were chosen because I simply liked them.” In the same paragraph she goes on to say, “…they all hold an idea that is so central to my own understanding of the world I have inherited. These essays stimulate my curiosity; they underline my sense of displacement.”

Apparently what stimulates this curiosity best for Kincaid are long and dense narratives that are worthy of a textbook. It’s not that the writing is bad: the collection, after all, features well-known authors Simon Winchester, Thomas Keneally, and Robert Young Pelton, as well as plenty of writers with prestigious awards hanging on their study wall. But the publications these were pulled from hint at the overall tone: erudite magazines such as Harpers, The New Yorker, The Missouri Review, and The American Scholar. If you’re the type that reads these kinds of magazines regularly or aspires to appear in one someday, you’ll like this collection. You’ll get a 24-page rundown on the history of Haiti, a 28-page explanation of how a barge gets down the Mississippi River, and a 29-page search for some abandoned underground tunnels in a Mexican border town.

Heady stuff indeed, with very little of the joy that most people derive from traveling. I realized I hadn’t smiled until page 52, as I read William E. Blundell’s very funny “My Florida.” The other bit of relief from all the seriousness comes from “Trying Really Hard to Like India,” a laugh-out-load piece from Seth Stephenson that originally appeared in Slate.

Bucky McMahon’s “Adrift” is probably the best case study lesson in here for the actual craft of writing. This Esquire piece, about a writer willingly setting himself adrift on an inflatable boat in the Gulf Steam, gets more disconcerted as it goes on, just as the writer does himself. It shows what a skilled wordsmith can accomplish by ignoring every rule about sentence fragments.

Another noteworthy piece is Murad Kalam’s “If It Doesn’t Kill You First,” a story about the Haj pilgrimage in Mecca. Ironically, this story also appears in another best of 2005 collection, the one published by Traveler’s Tales. Get that one if you want to read stories that are fun, intriguing, and exuberant. Get this one if your tastes run more to stories that are scholarly, cerebral, and intellectual. (Or just borrow it from the library and prepare to skim.)

Tim Leffel has contributed to a wide range of travel magazines and newspapers and is the author of The World’s Cheapest Destinations (www.WorldsCheapestDestinations.com). He is the travel writing moderator for TransitionsAbroad.com.