Getting About

When it came to writing about travels, few journalists could rival William F. Buckley Jr. Author of sixteen novels, Buckley was a master storyteller who skillfully balanced the apparently conflicting devices of fiction with the elements of reporting to create entertaining travel pieces suffused with exuberance and authority. With a flair for literary journalism, a fondness for friendship, and a passion for fun, Buckley was an elegant jet-setter whose travel writings deserve compiling into a single volume. These selections—spanning nearly a lifetime of adventures on boats, trains, and planes around the world for work or pleasure—broaden the scope and deepen the significance of Buckley’s oeuvre. The collection also helps preserve Buckley’s legacy as his centenary, in 2025, approaches.

            But why now a book about travel and travel writing, when the landscape for the genre appears to be shifting? The New York Times, for example, dropped its thick travel section from the Sunday paper, then brought it back as a weekly page. National Geographic Traveler, a reputable brand, discontinued its US edition, and Lonely Planet, the most trusted name in guide books, rethought its collection of newly offered titles. Perhaps the most important development took place when the Best American Travel Writing, an anthology published annually for twenty-two years, released its final volume in 2021. Reacting to this news, Thomas Swick at Lithub suggested that the genre has “mystifyingly lost its allure.” But has it? I side with author Carl Thompson, who believes, “Travel writing is currently a flourishing and highly popular literary genre […] [R]ecent decades have undoubtedly witnessed a travel writing ‘boom,’ and this boom shows no signs of abating in the near future.” Although Thompson made those claims more than a decade ago in his book Travel Writing, some evidence supports embracing it today. Take the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition. Recognizing “excellence in the field” since 1985, and administered by the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation, this prestigious contest received 1,278 entries in thirty-seven categories for material produced in 2020—a year when travel was, to say the least, uncertain due to the worldwide pandemic.

            Demonstrating the genre’s resiliency, as well, technology has facilitated the growth of blogs, newsletters, multimedia presentations, and social-media platforms as vibrant outlets. What is more, travel writing has sustained a gradual ascent in academia arguably ever since the publication of Paul Fussell’s 1980 pioneering book Abroad: British Literary Travel Between the Wars. Once thought too “popular” for legitimate Ivory Tower scholarship, travel writing is now an acceptable field of inquiry—although a) much of it is informed by trendy themes and b) a commercially successful author like Paul Theroux still might be thought lowbrow. Which brings up the travel writer’s motivation. Jan Lukacs “travel[ed] to certain places because of their history” and later gathered the essays into a wonderful book, Destinations Past, which he maintains “is not really a travel book, and… not travel-writing.” But it really is. In the soul of every travel writer resides the pedagogue, whose wanderlust inspires a personally fulfilling journey of discovery to be shared with readers. For the travel writing journalist, however, there’s one measure of success: “A story,” writes doyen of travel Tim Cahill, “is the essence of the travel essay. Readers want something that holds their attention. They want to be entertained and informed.”