Travel
Bound
by Jim Gladstone
 AIRPLANE
READ OF THE MONTH
Wish You Weren’t Here!: The Black Cat Anthology of
Travel Humor, edited by Cecil Kuhne (Grove Atlantic.
$13. www.groveatlantic.com),
offers a terrific selection of short tales by an astonishingly
wide range of authors. Considering that Ludwig Bemelmans
(best known as the author and illustrator of the Madeline
series of children’s books), Sarah Vowell (best known
as a contributor to National Public Radio’s This
American Life), and Mark Twain (best known of the lot)
successfully share space between these covers, speaks
to the near universal appeal of both laughter and what
Twain memorably called “lighting out for the territories.”
The sinking feeling you’ll get while reading the
new book by columnist Judith “Miss Manners”
Martin won’t have anything to do with your lapses
in etiquette. No Vulgar Hotel: The Desire and Pursuit
of Venice (W.W. Norton. $15.95. www.wwnorton.com)
is Martin’s paean to the waterlogged life of the
world’s most romantic city. This grand miscellany
of brief, fact-filled essays zigs and zags through Venetian
culture and history with a haphazard organization akin
to the city’s labyrinthine streetscape. Dip into
this book on any page, and, as when turning a corner
in Venice, you’re sure to find something alluring.
Martin offers wry discourses on Venetian inventions
(The mirror! The cookbook!), traditions (in the 19th
century, holiday games included bobbing for live eels),
and fashion (“As in all working cities that dislike
being mistaken for resorts, athletic gear worn as streetwear
meets with civic disapproval”). If you’re
fantasizing or fondly remembering a trip to Venice,
Martin not only helps out with her own notes, but recommends
books and movies to help “sustain us between trips,”
offering images of Katherine Hepburn tumbling into a
canal in Summertime and Christopher Walken seducing
Rupert Everett in The Comfort of Strangers. Like a stashed
away bundle of handwritten love letters, this book charms
with its idiosyncracy and infatuation.
 Elsewhere
in Italy, Douglas Preston (the National Geographic writer
and bestselling author of archaeology-themed thrillers
including Tyrannosaur Canyon) arrives in Tuscany for
a planned idyll, only to find it turn into a real-life
murder mystery. In The Monster of Florence (Grand
Central Publishing. $25.99. www.hachettebookgroupusa.com),
shortly after Preston moves to Italy with his family,
he learns that a double murder by one of modern Europe’s
most notorious serial killers took place in an olive
grove not far from his villa. Working alongside local
journalist Mario Spezi, Preston delves into the story
of the criminal, who has never been apprehended. The
trail heats up, and then becomes inextricably tangled
with bureaucratic corruption and unsettled scores. A
nifty blend of true crime, provincial politics, and
atmospheric settings, The Monster of Florence, with
its echoes of Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil
and Hannibal, is a great beach read for folks who’d
rather be spending their summer overseas than on the
sand.
 Art
historian Laura Morelli has great tips for buying souvenirs.
In fact, she can easily help you plan a whole trip around
acquiring them. In Made in France (Universe Publishing.
$24.95. www.rizzoliusa.com),
her latest volume in the illustrated series that also
includes Made in Italy and Made in the Southwest, Morelli
leads readers on an elegantly narrated tour of French
artisanal traditions, from lacemaking to basket-weaving,
to the creation of umbrellas, perfume, porcelain, chocolates,
and soap. More than a traveler’s shopping guide,
the book offers pithy explanations of craftspeople’s
techniques and styles, helping the reader understand
the nuances that make an objet truly special. Morelli
points the way to studios, flea markets, and boutiques
in every area of France, highlighting each region’s
distinctive specialties and encouraging readers to focus
on the local.
 Smile
While You’re Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel
Writer by Chuck Thompson (Henry Holt & Co. $15.
www.henryholt.com),
is a gleefully rabid diatribe against tourism and journalism.
It offers up some valid criticisms of the author’s
one-time bread-and-butter (Thompson has written and
edited guidebooks and travel magazines) along with wild
tales of dive bars, drugs, and dangerous detours that
never made it into his glossy newsstand stories. Much
of the book reads like the transcript of a smart, sharp,
stand-up comedy routine. Riffing on travel writing clichés,
Thompson takes aim at “the mealy default city descriptive
that highlights a destination’s ‘bewitching
blend of the ancient and modern,’ its ‘intoxicating
brew of the time-honored and trendy,’ or its ‘enchanting
collision of the classic and contemporary’…Yes,
Lisbon has a history, it has a present, and evidence
of each can be found there. Same goes for Colby, Kansas,
Stockton, California, and my fucking backyard, so there’s
no reason to invent ‘a delightful stew of Old World
and disco influences’ to promote the most obvious
point since the concept of time was first elucidated.”
Despite his gripe-filled yarns of fire-ant attacks,
sleazy sex clubs, and cruise ships full of fat Midwesterners,
Thompson clearly adores the sense of discovery and opportunity
for analysis that travel provides. In the end, the most
frustrating and most rewarding aspect of any trip for
Thompson—whether a commercial package tour, a press
junket, or a self-propelled harrowing adventure—is
the fact that the experience can never be fully captured
in words.
[Published:
June, 2008]
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