From the Writer’s Almanac

It’s the birthday of the man who said: “Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.” Paul Theroux, born in Medford, Massachusetts (1941). After college he went in the Peace Corps and taught school in Malawi, Africa, and he wrote. Ten years after college graduation, he had written ten books, and it was the 10th that made his reputation: The Great Railway Bazaar (1975), a travelogue of his four-month trip across Asia. His advice for aspiring writers: “Leave home. Because if you stay home people will ask you questions that you can’t answer. They say, “What are you going to write? Where will you publish it? Who’s going to pay you? How will you make a living?” If you leave home, no one asks you questions like that.”

His advice for aspiring travel writers is the same: leave home. But without a companion, and never by plane. Theroux prefers trains. He said: “Ever since childhood, I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it.”

 

Cadogan’s Provence

Cadogan has become my new favorite travel guide. Beth, my former boss, recommended the title and suggested I visit Provence while in France. This guide’s strength is the commentary which is often funny and provides just the right amount and kind of facts. Here’s a sample:

On Arles
Like Nîmes, Arles has enought intact antiquities to call itself the “Rome of France”; unlike Nîmes it lingered in the post-Roman limelight for another thousand years, producing enough saints for every month on the calendar. . . . Henry James wrote “As a city Arles quite misses its effect in every way: and if it is a charming place, as I think it is, I can hardly tell the reason why.” Modern Arles, sitting amidst its ruins, is still somehow charming, in spite of a general scruffiness that seems more intentional than natural.

By the way I really like Arles. It was easy to get around and there was plenty of charm and good food for three days.