Gail Pool

Australian Aboriginal art is so often about place that, like maps, it seems to me a kind of travel writing.

This work is from "Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia," a terrific exhibition at the Harvard Art Museums.

The Travellers' Dictionary of Quotation: Who Said What, About Where?, by Peter Yapp, is a great resource for travel writers and researchers--and it's also great fun to read. If you can get hold of a copy! Published in 1983, the book now seems to be out of print--I hope some publisher will bring out a new, updated edition. Read More 

Travels with Charley: In Search of America
By John Steinbeck. First published 1961. Penguin Edition, 1986, 277 pp.

John Steinbeck’s account of the American road trip he took in 1960 with his French poodle Charley is surely a classic that all travel book reviewers should have read. So it’s with some embarrassment that I confess I’ve only gotten around to it now. Why had I never read it? After all, you don’t simply miss such an acclaimed and popular work in your field. Clearly, I had avoided it.

In retrospect—and I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this as well—I think my problem was the dog. When I was younger, I wasn’t overly fond of dogs. The only dog I’d had anything to do with was the one my parents got after I’d left home, a neurotic Scottie who growled at me on visits, and bared his teeth. I sympathized with the neurosis—a family trait!—but kept my distance all the same. He was not a friendly soul.

I also think I felt—without having read the book—that Steinbeck might have used the dog as a gimmick. And I find that travel book gimmicks—designed, I always feel, to sell books—can be annoying.

In any case, before I turn off all dog lovers—which seems to be most Americans—let me say that having lived with and loved a dog in recent years, my attitude has entirely changed.

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