They went: The art and craft of travel writing (The Writer's craft)

Rating:
Summary: Two ways to travel and write about it
Review: If you are planning to travel and write about it afterwards, the message of They Went is that you can travel as an incomplete person and work out who you are by traveling to other places, or as a complete person who wants to see another part of the world. Adrea Lee and Vivian Gornick were reporters who were incomplete persons working out their own minds. Calvin Trillin and Ian Frazier went out to report on the United States with completeness in their every step. Mark Salzman and Tobias Schneebaum did their travels without an audience in mind. But Salzman wrote about where he visited, and Schneebaum wrote as a way of dealing with past events and "personal demons." All six authors include practical advice for travel writing, if you look for it. From Frazier you can see the example of visiting a place, reading about it, and revisiting it to see it more clearly. You can follow Frazier's advice to take the favorite things you want to write about most and put them together as a book. From Lee you can learn "to draw on whatever passion and empathy you can, based on your own experience, and then step back and stay out of the picture." From Salzman you can learn to string together "small, jewel like episodes" into chapters for your book. From Gornick , how to keep files on people you know and not let your subject get away from you. From Trillin you can learn how to "individualize by specific detail" in your writing, and from Schneebaum you can learn that you should use a journal to organize you experiences.

Rating:
Summary: They Went over board
Review: The art and craft of travel writing is exactly what it sounds like. The introduction

gives a brief layout of the chapters ahead. In the introduction the main points are presented for each section. Ian Frazier writing about the Great Plains presents many facts of the Great Plains, but the real story comes from his thoughts. The thoughts of his carving his name in the wall, is a fact of thought that brings you closer to him as a person. Frazier makes his story come alive with his personal experiences and quoted comments. Andrea Lee traveled to Russia to get the experience to write a book. She made extensive notes on each person she came in contact with. These people and the feelings of the country were to be her story. Throughout the time she lived in Russia Andrea recognized people living double lives. People living double lives are people relaying information back to their mother country. She was going after passion and empathy, but I do not believe she achieved her goal. Wrote the "The Peopling Landscape." The stand out story in this review was personal experiences between her father the amateur astronomer and herself at the age of seven years old. At the age of seven her father toke her and her bother to Virginia to see an eclipse.