First, Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?
A little disappointing - possibly it couldn't live up to the magnificent title. When this book was released, there was something of a brouhaha about how awful it was that a writer for Lonely Planet could possibly be anything less than perfectly honest - but at least Kohnstamm was being honest about not being honest.
It's perfectly readable, and not particularly offensive (what was everyone getting angry about?) but I never felt there was either a very strong narrative hook, or "High Adventures, Questionable Ethics and Professional Hedonism"; but then I'm English; to us, living with a prostitute, trying to sell drugs and getting lost in a desert are all pretty quotidien activities.
Then
The blurb suggests that Thompson is the new Chuck Klostermann. Well, I love Sex Drugs And Cocoa Puffs, so I had high hopes for this, and it does have some good parts. At the same time, it's lacking some bite - I was gladdened that Thompson really does set out his stall about what's wrong with travel journalism, and how it should be fixed, but it all felt a little episodic and lacking in depth. Perhaps it's good that I came away wanting more, but at the same time some of the chapters (especially his time in Japan) went on a bit too long without having anything strong to say. So a curate's egg, perhaps - maybe it should have been twice the length, maybe it should have been a 6 page article in Travelocity magazine, maybe I should read books slower.
: Well, that was slightly unpleasant. I got half way through and realised that I had no sympathy for any of the characters, and I wasn't quite sure why I was reading the book. It was well-constructed - well, perhaps I should say well-executed, but it seemed devoid of feeling and at the same time belaboured with a slightly sappy ending - not sure if that was a twist or a lack of faith at the end in the nastiness of the rest of the book. I can't say much more for it really - it was short, it kept me up until 1 in the morning to finish it, so successful on its own terms.
in two days flat. I enjoyed that a lot (I'd forgotten a lot of the plot so it was great to rediscover that, and find that lines I'd remembered in one part of the book were actually in quite another) but there were a few flaws. Most jarring to me was that Stephenson defines loglo twice in the space of twenty pages - now, it's a good neologism, and one to be proud of coining, but you only need to define it once, don't you? Or was he already aiming for an ADHD'd market? If that were the case, why would he go on to build books of such biblical proportion later on?