Your compass is pointing at the magnetic field of travel.
Journey by the Book is a tool enabling the pathfinder-whether tenderfoot or veteran scout-to explore uncharted seas and territories in the kingdom of travel.
Author Van Tassel discusses a vast sampling of travel narratives. If the story uses a voyage, pilgrimage, or journey as pivotal for its meaning and structure, it will figure prominently in the array of tales he tallies.
The book defines categories of travel literature and discusses the gamut of impulses prompting travel, travel writing, and travel reading.
The tales of travel summoned, explored, and scrutinized for the armchair traveler extend from imaginary journeys to very real ones, including:
• The Odyssey
• Gulliver's Travels
• Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• Road trips and tramps by Twain, Steinbeck, Kerouac, Pirsig, Bill Bryson, and others
• Exotic adventures recounted by Polo and Newby
• Epic voyages logged by discoverers Captain Cook, Conrad, Dana, and Heyerdahl
• Marathon journeys by Theroux, Naipaul, Davidson, Simon, and Hoffman
• And assorted other tales varying by mode and direction of travel
Multifaceted travel accounts, ranging from novels and guidebooks to travelogues and travel-oriented magazines and sketches, are all testaments to what the travel story can do: stoke and satisfy a reader's wanderlust. It's your turn.
