Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer by Chuck Thompson

Author:Chuck Thompson [Thompson, Chuck]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel, Essays & Travelogues
ISBN: 9781429924870
Google: WEw8ufDcvDAC
Amazon: B000V78UR2
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
Published: 2007-11-27T00:00:00+00:00

No Cabbie Quotes

A certain sign you're reading the work of a lazy travel writer is when you see quotes from taxi drivers, hotel clerks, and maître d's. For most writers, the single most degrading part of their job, even worse than the crappy pay, is talking to strangers.

This is why writers often satisfy the obligation to provide quotes and local color by taking the easiest route and chatting up those already in their midst, such as taxi drivers, leading to the reader's false impression that the secrets of any burg can be extracted in a five-minute conversation with an immigrant man who spends his days in the company of those least likely to know anything about the city they're in. Namely, out-of-towners and locals without the resources to drive themselves around.

There's a complex psychology that explains why the average travel writer recoils from journalism's most basic information-gathering technique. First, the palpable awkwardness of a contrived conversation undermines any sense of natural give-and-take banter the interview is supposed to replicate. Second, interviews create a social hierarchy of two, making the interviewer supplicant to the interviewee.

This second point can be tough to cope with, since all writers have massive egos—if they didn't they wouldn't seek jobs encouraging them to broadcast their every mundane observation to the world—and very few are good at hiding this unflattering side of their personalities. For the writer, hanging around a locker room until eleven at night hoping to pry a nugget of wisdom out of Carmelo Anthony is one thing. Pretending to be interested in a sales pitch from the manager of a "hip" and "trendy" new patisserie in Savannah, Georgia, is quite another. The whole time an exchange of ideas about mocha-cinnamon breakfast muffins is taking place, the smiling writer is thinking, "If anything, it is I who should be getting interviewed, I whose wisdom the world should be seeking. I'm the one who's been to the Giant's Causeway and am on speaking terms with Carmelo Fucking Anthony."

The only reason a writer quotes cabdrivers or other service-industry minions is to disguise the fact that he or she didn't want to deal with the hassle of drumming up any authoritative local sources. Think of all the cabdrivers you know. You don't know any. That's because in every major city in the world—London excepted—taxis are driven by impoverished foreigners who don't know Sukhumvit Road from Euclid Avenue, work insane hours, talk to their buddies on the cell phone all day, and fall asleep as soon as the off-duty sign lights up. Cabbies having their fingers on the pulse of a city is the biggest travel myth since "Hey, we can stop and get reliable directions at the gas station!"

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.