travel memoir – C.M. Mayo's Book Notes & Convos

Recommended Literary Travel Memoirs

This blog posts on Mondays. Second Mondays of the month I devote to my writing workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing. Welcome!

> For the archive of workshop posts click here.

This is a list, not of any so-called cannon of the genre, but of the books that have been my teachers as I learned to write literary travel memoir. It also includes those I have read relatively recently and greatly admire. The ones that are starred are those that I have read and reread time and again; each, in its own way, has been vitally helpful to me, whether for shorter pieces such as A Visit to Swan House; longer ones such as From Mexico to Miramar or, Across the Lake of Oblivion, or my books, among them, Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California the Other Mexico. I aim to read many more literary travel memoirs, learn much more about the craft, and write more essays and books (indeed my book in-progress is a travel memoir of Far West Texas), hence I consider this an embryonic list.

If you, dear writerly reader, are writing literary travel memoir or anything in the realm of “creative nonfiction,” I would encourage you to read the books on this list; may you enjoy and learn from them as I did.

At the same time, I would encourage you, if you have not already, to make your own list of works that you have already read and— never mind what anyone else thinks— that you admired and loved. Then ask yourself: What do these works you so love and admire have in common? How do they handle descriptions of nature, or animals, of crowd scenes? Transitions? Dialogue? Sandwiching in the exposition? Narrative structure? Throw whatever writerly questions you can think of at these, your True Faves, and I’ll betcha bucks to buttons, they will teach you something valuable.

A final note: “Literary travel writing” can be defined in myriad ways. How far does one have to travel to consider it travel writing? The Pushkar camel fair would be fab, but I say, your own backyard will do. The idea is to see with new eyes and an open heart, then tell a good story.

Armitage, Shelley. Walking the Llano: A Texas Memoir of Place

Bain, David Haward. Sitting in Darkness: Americans in the Philippines

Berger, Bruce. Almost an Island

—. The End of the Sherry

—. The Telling Distance: Conversations with the American Desert.

—. A Desert Harvest
This splendid anthology collects selected essays from Bruce Berger’s masterwork of a desert trilogy, The Telling Distance, Almost an Island, and There Was a River. P.S. Read my Q & A with Bruce Berger apropos of the publication of this collection here.

Bogard, Paul. The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light.

*Brown, Nancy Marie. The Far-Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman

Buford, Bill. Among the Thugs

*Byron, Robert. The Road to Oxiana

Calderón de la Barca, Frances. Life in Mexico

*Chatwin, Bruce. In Patagonia

Childs, Craig. Atlas of a Lost World: Travels in Ice Age America

—. The Secret Knowledge of Water: Discovering the Essence of the American Desert

*Conover, Ted. Coyotes

—. Whiteout: Lost in Aspen

—. New Jack: Guarding Sing Sing (not precisely travel writing, but who’s to say? A masterpiece)

Ehrlich, Gretel. This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland

Ellis, Hattie. Sweetness and Light: The Mysterious History of the Honeybee

*Fergus, Charles. Summer at Little Lava: A Season at the Edge of the World

*Fisher, M.F.K. Long Ago in France: The Years in Dijon

Ford, Corey. Where the Sea Breaks Its Back

*Frazier, Ian. Great Plains

*Fussell, Paul. Abroad: British Literary Traveling Between the Wars
Not a travel memoir, rather its about travel memoir, nonetheless…

Gibson, Gregory. Demon of the Waters: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Whaleship Globe
(Yes, I’m calling this a literary travel memoir. Here’s why.)

Godwin, Peter. When a Crocodile Eats the Sun

*Iyer, Pico. Video Night in Kathmandu

Karlin, Wayne. Wandering Souls: Journeys with the Dead and Living in Viet Nam

Kapuscinski, Ryszard. Travels with Herodotus

Klindienst, Patricia. The Earth Knows My Name

Larkin, Emma. Finding George Orwell in Burma

Martínez, Rubén. Desert America

*Mowat, Farley. Walking on the Land

*Morris, Jan. Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere

Morris, Mary. The River Queen

*Naipaul, V.S. Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey

*—. A Turn in the South

Nickerson, Sheila. Disappearance: A Map

Peasley, W.J., The Last of the Nomads

*Poncins, Gontran de. Kabloona

Quinones Sam. True Tales from Another Mexico

*Seth, Vikram. From Heaven Lake, Travels through Sinkiang and Tibet

Steinbeck, John. The Log from the Sea of Cortez

Swain, Jon. River of Time: A Memoir of Vietnam and Cambodia

Synge, J.M. The Aran Islands

Taber, Sara Mansfield. Born Under An Assumed Name: The Memoir of a Cold War Spy’s Daughter

—. Bread of Three Rivers: The Story of a French Loaf

—. Dusk on the Campo: A Journey in Patagonia

Toth, Jennifer. The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City

Tree, Isabella. Sliced Iguana

Turner, Frederick. In the Land of the Temple Caves
Read my post about this book here.

Tweit, Susan J. Barren, Wild, and Worthless: Living in the Chihuahuan Desert

Wheeler, Sara. Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica

*White, Kenneth. Across the Territories: Travels from Orkney to Rangiroa

Whynot, Douglas. Following the Bloom: Across America with the Migratory Beekeepers

Wright, Lawrence. God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State

Q & A: Ellen Cassedy, Translator of On the Landing by Yenta Mash

Why I Am a Mega-Fan of the Filofax

Texas Pecan Pie for Dieters, Plus from the Archives:
A Review of James McWilliams’ The Pecan

My new book is Meteor

Synge’s “The Aran Islands” and Kapuscinski’s “Travels with Herodotus”

Warmest wishes to you, dear writerly readers, for a fabulously felicitous and swirlingly creative 2019.

With the new year two brilliant titles have just been added to my list of recommended literary travel memoirs: J. M. Synge’s The Aran Islands and Ryszard Kapuscinski’s Travels with Herodotus. The former is a classic of the Irish Renaissance published in 1907; the latter, the memoir / meditation of an extraordinary Polish international journalist of covering India, China, Africa and more in the 1950s and ’60s. Both of these memoirs were written well before the advent of smartphones and social media and in many ways reading them–and on paper– felt like… profound relief. I’ll have more to say about smartphones, social media, and literary travel writing in next Monday’s post.

Speaking of writing, I can scarcely believe it but in 2019 “Madam Mayo,” this veritable Methusela of blogdom, will celebrate its 13th year. And it has been blinking & beeping on my “to do” list for nearly all of these many years to take my own advice and get off of the Google platform onto self-hosted WordPress.

In the last days of 2018, I finally did it– but not exactly. Various research surfaris yielded the intelligence that blogger-to-Wordpress migrations oftentimes work smoothly but, perchance generate headache-inducing snafus. Moreover, there is a huff-and-puff of a learning curve for any new digital endeavor. Hence I plan to keep that ginormous olde blog parked right where it’s always been at https://madammayo.blogspot.com, while offering new posts (and reposting selected posts of yore, bit by bit as I see fit) at this WordPress self-hosted site, www.madam-mayo.com.

If you subscribe by email, I hope you’ll consider resubscribing from the new WordPress blog instead. (I think that button works over there on the sidebar; if not, it will soon.)

What can you expect from “Madam Mayo” in 2019?

Front and center, I’ll be bringing back the Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project, finishing up podcasts 21-24, as I continue to work on my book on Far West Texas.

As ever, I translate Mexican literature, so I’ll post news and links about those projects and writers as they become available.

My book Meteor, which won the Gival Poetry Prize for publication in 2018, will, after all, be published early this year, so look for some posts on poetry as well.

In addition, as in 2018, the second Monday of each month will be dedicated to topics for my writing workshop, and the fourth to a Q & A with a fellow writer. Next up is the intrepid David A. Taylor, author of Cork Wars.

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> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Meteor, Influences, Ambiance

One Simple Yet Powerful Practice
in Reading as a Writer

Q & A with Novelist Leslie Pietrzyk on Writers Groups,
the Siren Song of the Online World, and on Writing Silver Girl

Visit my website for more about my books, articles, and podcasts.

Bruce Berger’s “The End of the Sherry”

Blue collar and provincial Puerto Real in the police state that was Franco’s Spain might seem an unlikely venue for an amusing, eccentric, and very sensitive artist’s memoir. A graduate of Yale and a grad school drop out, pianist and writer Bruce Berger’s whole life seems unlikely, lived wildly out of sequence, and in The End of the Sherry, the Spanish chapters thereof beset by, in his words, “a curious passivity.” From the moment Berger washes up in a bar in Puerto Real, he and his beer-slurping dog drift and bob in the flow of happenstance. There are gigs with a rock band, a flash-in-the-pan career as a fishmonger, a pointless foray into Tangiers– yet always with sails set toward his true loves, music and writing.

I first came across Bruce Berger’s work in his travel memoir of Baja California, Almost an Island, and was enchanted by the beauty of his language, his courage in always pushing past clichés, and, best of all, his scrumptiously puckish sense of humor. Yes, I laughed out loud a lot in reading The End of the Sherry, too, and shook my head in wonder at the strangeness of his adventures and enthusiasms, and prodigious talent for cross-cultural friendships. Masterfully poetic, this belated coming-of-age / travel memoir throws a weird and wonderful lava-lamp light on his other works, even while standing solidly on its own, an exemplar of those genres.

In sum, a five star read.

Q & A with Bruce Berger on A Desert Harvest

On the Trail of the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos

A Visit to the Casa de la Primera Imprenta de América in Mexico City

Visit my website for more about my books, articles, and podcasts.