Tourists With Typewriters: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Travel Writing - Hardcover

Holland, Patrick; Huggan, Graham

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0472109731 ISBN 13: 9780472109739

Publisher: Univ of Michigan Pr, 1999

Synopsis

The first extensive survey of contemporary travel writing, Tourists with Typewriters offers a series of challenging and provocative critical insights into a wide range of travel narratives written in English after the Second World War. The book focuses in particular on contemporary travel writers such as Jan Morris, Peter Matthiessen, V. S. Naipaul, Barry Lopez, Mary Morris, Paul Theroux, Peter Mayle, and the late Bruce Chatwin. It examines some of the reasons for travel writing's enduring popularity, and for its particular appeal to readers--many of them also travelers--in the present.
The book maps new terrain in a growing area of critical study. Although critical of travel writing's complacency and its often unacknowledged ethnocentrism, the book recognizes its importance as both a literary and cultural form. While travel writing at its worst emerges as a crude expression of economic advantage, at its best it becomes a subtle instrument of cultural self-perception, a barometer for changing views of "other" (i.e., foreign, non-Western) cultures, and a trigger for the information circuits that tap us into the wider world.
Tourists with Typewriters gauges both the best and worst in contemporary travel writing, capturing the excitement of this most volatile--and at times infuriating--of literary genres. The book will appeal to general readers interested in a closer examination of travel writing and to academic readers in disciplines such as literary/cultural studies, geography, history, anthropology, and tourism studies.
"An eminently readable and informative study. It breathes tolerance and intelligence. It is critically perceptive and very au courant. It raises issues (coloniality, postmodernity, gender. . . ) and discusses books that readers of many different stripes will want to find out about." --Ross Chambers, University of Michigan
Patrick Holland, Associate Professor of English, University of Guelph, was born in New Zealand and educated in England, Australia, and Canada. Graham Huggan, Professor of English, University of Munich, was born in Hong Kong and educated in England and in British Columbia.

About this title

Reviews

Travel writing has become a commercial success, and the popularity of the genre has increased with the global spread of tourism. Holland (English, Univ. of Guelph, Ontario) and Huggan (English, Univ. of Munich) bring a literary background to their study, which covers a selection of travel narratives written after World War II with a focus on writers they consider to be "specialists" in the genre (Bruce Chatwin, Paul Theroux, V.S. Naipaul, and others). They maintain that travel writing is a form of elitism written predominantly by white, middle-class, European American males. The chapters of the book are divided in a useful and consistent format by discipline, including history, geography, culture, gender issues, and future itineraries. The authors conclude their study with a review of the likely role of travel writing in the future. Though the audience for this book may be limited, it would be a strong addition to any collection of literary criticism.?Cynde Bloom Lahey, New Canaan Lib., CT
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ of Michigan Pr
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0472109731
• ISBN 13: 9780472109739
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 261