The Best American Travel Writing 2011

September 1, 2011

An eclectic but not particularly strong collection of pieces involving travel around the globe and around the yard.

Independent columnist Crosley (How Did You Get This Number, 2010, etc.) presents a wide variety of pieces, including André Aciman's search for Monet sites in Bordighera, Christopher Buckley's brief account of a year on a tramp freighter, Keith Gessen's grousings about Moscow traffic and Emily Witt's sophomoric snippets about her drinking and partying in Miami. At times, Crosley seems bent on juxtaposing pieces to see what light may emerge from the collision, say, between Téa Obreht's peregrinations in the Balkans hearing vampire stories and Annie Proulx's quiet walks around her Wyoming ranch observing the wildlife. At other times, the editor places shorter pieces (Gary Shteyngart's cryptic ruminations about Russians in Israel) before longer ones (William T. Vollmann's six visits to Kirkuk to learn about the Kurds and the explosive politics in the region). There are essays by writers who went to geographical extremes (Justin Nobel to Arctic Quebec, Verlyn Klinkenborg to a remote area of Australia, Maureen Dowd to Saudi Arabia) and those who stuck closer to home (Ariel Levy to the Hamptons for an enlightening piece about Indian casinos, Jessica McCaughey on a local hike where she tried to cure her inept internal GPS). Some pieces have moments that are downright harrowing: Mischa Berlinski's views of earthquake devastation in Haiti, Tom Ireland's time in Mumbai while terrorists were killing people.

Although these writers invariably have something novel to say, there aren't a lot of moments that will make armchair travelers race out to renew their passports.

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September 15, 2011
Crosley, in her introduction to this year's edition of the popular series, notes that the new obstacle of travel in the age of informationand thus, uberpreparednessis the extinction of the unexpected. Crosley sets the hopeful traveler's tone with Andr' Aciman's serendipity-filled adventure to hunt down the ghost of a Monet subjecta villa on the Italian Riviera. Emily Witt's short-attention-span-friendly Miami Party Boom earns points for most creative format, each interlude chronicling a social event and its characters. There's much affection for contributors' subjects to be found herefrom Mischa Berlinski's Haiti, and the young man he befriends there, to T'a Obreht's Serbia, where she reveals a decidedly unique take on American vampire mania. Readers, beware: few may feel courageous enough to attempt their own bird-watching journal after a flight in the tender grip of Annie Proulx's enchanting diary of an aviary Wyoming year. Crosley reminds readers that the nature of the world is that it will provide that valuable introductory course only once, and her selections succeed in piquing the armchair traveler's wanderlust.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)