Why Is There No Travel Writing?
Notes on the Monoculture
I have this like ancient memory of being a teenager and finding nothing more interesting than travel writing — Paul Theroux, Ryszard Kapuściński, Robert Kaplan, people like that. I remember being very impressed when, in college, I discovered that a friend had actually brought a full bookshelf of Lonely Planets with him to campus and read them for pleasure.
Somehow, I can’t picture any college students doing that right now, and as far as I can tell, travel writing has almost completely disappeared as a genre. I can’t even think of a publication that puts out genuine travel pieces — Atlas Obscura is pretty much all lifestyle and its writers rarely leave their New York cubicles.
So what’s going on exactly? Travel would seem to be the most immutable, most endlessly-interesting kind of writing. I remember a teacher of mine saying once that “all writing is travel writing” — and I think that’s basically true. Meanwhile, the world is getting smaller, the cost of travel cheaper — it would seem the ideal moment for a fluorescence of travel writing.
I have three theories for what’s happening, one structural, one cultural, and one spiritual.
The structural theory is that what happened to travel writing is an extension of what happened to international reporting in general — it was just too expensive and not worth the sunk costs. A piece by a Paul Theroux-type writer likely costs a great deal when you add up the meals, hotel, and airfare — and isn’t a worthwhile investment when most journalism can happen from a writer at a laptop.
The cultural theory is that it’s not worth it as an investment because there’s no appetite for it. When travel writing has been a mega-phenomenon — in the traveler accounts of the 18th century that did so much to launch the modern publishing industry, in the dispatches from Victorian explorers that were regularly front page news in the 19th century, etc — there was the sense of danger and the sense of exploration, the real possibility of a writer bringing back some completely different way of thinking or of living in the world. Nobody thinks they’re going to get that now if they read a travel essay, so no one really reads travel essays — or at least not with the enthusiasm that would justify their costs.
And then the spiritual theory is that we have entered into the monoculture. People not only lack an appetite for the exploration of other parts of the world, but they actually don’t find it interesting. It’s assumed that everywhere, basically, is the same, or variations of the same. There’s more developed and less developed, with a few cultural distinctions thrown in. To focus on the less-developed is, increasingly, to run the risk of ‘exoticizing’ while the more developed is boring — basically just tips for where to shop and eat. It seems, judging by the paucity of travel writing, that we have never been closer and we have never been less interested in each other.
All of this is really unfortunate for many reasons. For one, I really love to travel — always find it interesting and, when I travel, enjoy being accompanied by a good traveler’s account, which can be surprisingly hard to find. For another, it’s not really true that a monoculture has taken hold. Yes, everybody has a cell phone and knows who Tom Cruise is, but mindsets, as I’m discovering, are very different in different parts of the world. What we have, I think, are competing modernities. The Russian modernity looks very different from the Chinese, looks very different from the African, looks very different from the American, etc. To tease out those very subtle differences in perspective, though, you would really need to be in a place for a long time — or, if you can’t go yourself, would really need access to a travel writer who can do that hard cultural work for you.
I would really love to see a resurgence of travel writing and I would like to see it on these terms — not about discovery or Herculean traveling feats but about immersion in different cultures and the teasing out of mindset. We are all right on top of each other. We owe it to ourselves to learn who other people are.
Sam Kahn writes
.
Without dismissing Samantha's comment, something did happen to travel lit. Definitely agree with how we are no longer exotic - which is important no matter what the Said style orientalists say - but it also goes deeper than that. Western countries (or at least their leftist leaders) have structured the West to be multicultural. Those audiences don't need literature from the Indigenous reporting on who they are, and the Indigenous no longer need to travel to experience other cultures; in fact, increasingly negative experiences with certain cultures have robbed a lot of cultures of their appeal. For the British today, most Asians (in the UK sense of the word) and West Indians are not exotic at all. It's a stronger feeling in Europe than America, but more Americans will feel it soon if things keep going as they do. If I was a betting man, I'd bet money that one will find a rough correlation between the real rise of the West's current demographic experiment and the decline of travel lit.
On top of that, the best travel lit has been written by very exceptional people and this is often forgotten. Kapuscinski - glad you gave him a shoutout - was a truly exceptional journalist who could see the unusual and the crazy a lot better than most. He was also brave. The fact of the matter is: recent generations lack those kinds of exceptional characters. Where before there were explorers, now there are selfie takers. No one who travels to Croatia to take Game of Thrones selfies is there to be the next Rebecca West. If such individuals exist, the current culture of conformity ensures they suppress any tendency to actually explore with foot, mind and soul. (Of course the primeval roots of European travel lit lie in pilgrimages, so that's another factor; no spirituality behind travel anymore) This doesn't apply to the basic act of travel, as you pointed out. But it would affect every other ingredient needed to cook a great work of travel lit. Unexceptional people who tweet and like and think they have all the answers to life in their smartphone don't learn all that much from their travels, especially given the similarities we now have; their head is full, to quote Avatar. It's kind of like how people will say "hey look, this culture is still a democracy" because they place ballots in a box and count them, even if the country is a police state with a dishonest media apparatus, persecution of political opponents and the appointing of candidates. The basic act of travel is only the basic foundation of travel lit. If travel lit is a skyscraper, today's travelers never ascend beyond the first story. (No pun intended)
A personal anecdote is also worth bringing up. In college, I met the travel author Jeff Greenwald. Cool fellow, very well-traveled, had even been to Iran. Afterward, I asked a fellow colleague what she thought of his presentation. Her opinion? "Just another entitled rich white guy who can travel." (This colleague was white and not, to my knowledge, poor) The real answer could be that simple: travel writing has simply had its day.
The future of travel lit lies in one of several paths. Specific subgenres can be developed to rise above "general" travel lit, as other cultures have done. Travel lit has surprisingly been neglected in that sense. Or travel fiction can fill its role, as some like Rodrigo Rey Rosa have done. Unlike straight-up travel lit, travel fiction can be done by expats just as well as travelers. And for this reason, it'll probably be superior to anything done by the tweeters and selfie takers.
In some respects, yes, travel writing has gone underground, relegated to blogland rather than being featured prominently in bookstores. I think the main reason might be that this type of storytelling has a harder time competing with more visually intensive media. You can find millions of extremely popular travel-tip accounts on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. You can also watch a number of shows on streaming services dedicated to this type of thing (Somebody Feed Phil comes to mind as a dorky, feel-good version of what Bourdain used to do).
That said, I'd love for someone to pick up the mantle and offer more gritty depictions and support for traveling cheaply. My wife and I are planning a trip to Japan, and almost everything we've found focuses on fine dining and $$$$ hotels. Not very helpful.