Smile When You're Lying

September 10, 2007
Travel writers lie, argues Thompson, and their editors not only know and excuse it, but demand it. As laid out in this vivid and ribald memoir by veteran travel writer Thompson—a former editor of Maxim
and Travelocity.com's short-lived print magazine—the industry is packed to the rafters with hacks churning out the same reheated swill for thinly disguised advertorial copy in glossy magazines. Sick of “leaving the most interesting material on the cutting-room floor,” Thompson slashes through the clichés of the travel industry's snake-oil salesmen with unmitigated glee. The Caribbean is “a miasmic hellscape.” The supposed narcoterrorist danger zone, Colombia, is a wonderful place with wonderful people (“But who buys magazines to read that?”). And the widely respected Lonely Planet guidebooks have ruined more travel destinations than have the tourists its writers sermonize against. If all Thompson was aiming for had been caustic observations about the industry he knows from the inside out, the book would have been an amusing but limited experience. But Thompson weaves his take on the travel racket and the damage it does into an engagingly personal narrative about his own nomadic life, tossing out raucous anecdotes about teaching ESL in a remote Japanese town or snorting cocaine with fellow staffers in the Alaska House of Representatives.

September 15, 2007
Thompson is an international travel writer who was sick of having his travel stories sanitized by the editors of glossy magazines, and he was sick of feeling the pressure to shill for the businesses that sponsored his trips. He wanted to tell the truth about the places he saw and his experiences, which werent always positive ones. So he wrote a book and included stories about being attacked by an army of ants in his bed in Brazil and being accosted by machete-wielding teens on a road in the Philippines. The result is not a flowing travel narrative but a patchwork of random ideas, opinions, and stories from Thompsons journeysand it works beautifully. Reading Thompson is like listening to a buddy who shoots from the hip. He gives the straight dope on what a travel writer really sees on his trips and includes his opinions about it. Although readers may not always agree with Thompsons conclusions (the Caribbean is a depressing place? Really?), they will recognize an authentic voice on the subject of travel when they encounter it.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)