Born On A Cusp

I like travel lit, and Pico Iyer’s Video Night in Kathmandu and multi-authored Stories from Nowhere remain my favourites of this genre. Reading travel stories not only allows me to live these writers’ lives vicariously, they actually help, too, during the times I go on my own travels.

Thus I find the controversy surrounding the book, ‘Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?’, of great interest.

See, there’s this Lonely Planet writer who decided to spill the beans on the methods he utilised for his research trip to Brazil, in the book to be released April 22. According to Amazon’s editorial review ahead of the book’s release, the guidebook writer, Thomas Kohnstamm, promises quite a nonchalant, funny, account of his adventures in Brazil, making no bones about his misadventures and the unglamorous side of travel writing, including sexual romps and making a quick buck from illegal drugs.

Kohnstamm’s stories are everything but funny, however, as far as Lonely Planet the company, is concerned. Lonely Planet has preempted the book’s release by issuing statements proclaiming that Kohnstamm is nothing more than a “rogue element.”

But then, in Lonely Planet’s internal online forum, a piece by another writer — leaked to a newspaper — described Kohnstamm’s book as “a car crash waiting to happen.”

This piece in Australia’s The Age puts things in perspective. In this essay, Chris Taylor, who has done books for Lonely Planet, discusses Kohnstamm’s ‘revelations’ in the context of the stiffly competitive world of travel writing.

Taylor says the huge proliferation of guidebook titles in the market in recent years has come parallel to the rise of the internet.

“In times past, the only way to research a guidebook was to actually go there — the alternative, plagiarising another guidebook, was, and still is, difficult to cover up. Today, you can sit at home and Google the town you might otherwise be exploring on foot, and hopefully some random blogger has done the legwork for you.”

The result of this huge market, he says, is that of publishers cutting budgets for actual research. At the same time, travellers like you and me have become smarter, using the internet to acquire information — like the professional guidebook writers.

Taylor: “The result: the death of the guidebook, at least as a reliable source of information of what’s happening in a place real time.”