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Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?: A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics, and Professional Hedonism | 
 enlarge | Author: Thomas Kohnstamm
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $7.63
You Save: $6.32 (45%)
New (28) Used (11) from $7.41
Rating:  38 reviews
Sales Rank: 31917
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.3 x 0.8
ISBN: 0307394654
Dewey Decimal Number: 910.4092
EAN: 9780307394651
ASIN: 0307394654
Publication Date: April 22, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW
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Product Description
For those who think that travel guidebooks are the gospel truth.
The waitress suggests that I come back after she closes down the restaurant, around midnight. We end up having sex in a chair and then on one of the tables in the back corner. I pen a note in my Moleskine that I will later recount in the guidebook review, saying that the restaurant “is a pleasant surprise . . . and the table service is friendly.” –Thomas Kohnstamm, professional travel writer and author of numerous Lonely Planet guidebooks
WANTED: Travel Writer for Brazil
QUALIFICATIONS REQUIRED
Decisiveness: the ability to desert your entire previous life–including well-salaried office job, attractive girlfriend, and basic sanity for less than minimum wage
Attention to detail: the skill to research northeastern Brazil, including transportation, restaurants, hotels, culture, customs, and language, while juggling sleep deprivation, nonstop nightlife, and excessive alcohol consumption
Creativity: the imagination to write about places you never actually visit
Resourcefulness: utilizing persuasion, seduction, and threats, when necessary, to secure a place to stay for the evening once your pitiable advance has been (mis)spent
Resilience: determination to overcome setbacks such as bankruptcy, disillusionment, and an ill-fated one-night stand with an Austrian flight attendant
As Kohnstamm comes to personal terms with each of these job requirements, he unveils the underside of the travel industry and its often-harrowing effect on writers, travelers, and the destinations themselves. Moreover, he invites us into his world of compromising and scandalous situations in one of the most exciting countries as he races against an impossible deadline.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 33 more reviews...
 Pretty average and somewhat boring September 29, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Most of this book is repetitive whining about lack of funds and huge hangovers....Jeez, grow up. Thomas is getting paid to write for Lonely Planet and can not find enough ambition to do the job, so he gets drunk and obsesses about his dwindling funs....Get over yourself Thomas.
 Dream job? Not so much. September 25, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In his book Do Travel Writers go to Hell?, intrepid traveler Thomas Kohnstamm does a fascinating job of weighing his own addiction of travel with the highly unreasonable expectations that are associated with being a guidebook travel writer. Also, Kohnstamm admirably demolishes the popular conception that travel writing is some sort of dream job; his consistently neurotic analysis of the futile planning, budgeting and writing for Lonely Planet, or any guidebook publisher for that matter is not only sobering, but warranted for those blinded by their travel-induced naivete.
Kohnstamm begins by disclaiming his addiction to travel and the atypical circumstances in which he decides to pursue it as a career. He subsequently embarks on his adventure to cover northeastern Brasil's most likely and unlikely tourist destinations (on behalf of Lonely Planet) and the people he meets along the way. It is here that one arrives at a recurring theme throughout the book: it is not necessarily the places one visits but the people met that makes the story worthwhile.
Insufficient stipends and unreasonable deadlines are just two of the variables obstructing Kohnstamm's progress. Throw in a constant stream of Brasilian cachaca, drugs, late nights/early mornings, the gamut of intestinal illnesses, opportunistic thugs as well as the usual bribery schemes (among all the players), and it is no wonder that the journey itself is truly the thing.
The book, however, is not simply a retelling of Kohnstamm's escapades. It does raise a lot of questions even for the novice traveler. He ponders the implications of cultural relativism, the apparent lawlessness and corruption, as well as the increasing commercialization and urbanization of Brasil at the expense of its history and identity. Not to mention the fringe benefits of writing positive reviews, especially if those reviews are generated by the favors exhibited on behalf the restaurant or hotel one is writing about.
If there was one thing I regretted about the book, apart from my envy, it is Kohnstamm's overindulgence at the expense of his craft. Granted, his wild nights performing "research" forces harried and slightly unethical writing; however, the descriptions of his supporting characters would subsequently suffer. Therein lies the dilemma: is this a travel writing book or a book about travel writing? The lines aren't always clear.
Kohnstamm does well to capture the sweltering zeitgeist of Northeastern Brasil and the plight of the travel writer, thereby leaving the reader with a nuanced yet realistic depiction of the industry, and tells a captivating story while doing so. His advice: if you really love to travel, think twice about making it your occupation.
 Perhaps this author will September 9, 2008
This book was profiled on National Public Radio and positioned there as an expose on the travel industry: how travel writers would review locales without ever going there, would use expense account money for living the high-life, and potentially show other borderline tricks of the trade. Once read, the book is really more of a memoir of a young, raunchy, travel-addled seeker escaping from the cubicle world of post-college career to a job 'on the wild side'. Unfortunately, the author brings himself on the trip. Before the author ever makes it to Northern Brazil, his first travel-writing assignment, he is involved in what apparently a regular occurrence of drunken fighting, seduction, drugs and general bad manners. The author tries to glamorize breaking up with his girlfriend, while actually misses the chance and adds no flourish to his rarely done and everyone-must-fantasize-about quitting his difficult boss and onerous job. Cue the necessary step back into his childhood, growing up, traveling experience and skill, and current emotions about work, marriage, lifestyle, etc. When we finally make it overseas, the author is persuasive in making the reader feel overwhelmed at the sheer number of towns, cities, and beaches he has to cover to even come close to not spending thousands of his own money (which he does not have) to accurately write his travel guide for this remote area. Later forays into multiple potential female 'partners', renting apartments vs. hotels, hoteliers, and throw in the odd Israeli ex-Mossad itinerant, and you have yourself a rockin' living-on-the-edge good time. Unfortunately, the book is only moderately well written and is much more an Augusten Burroughs saga of a troubled heterosexual trying to suck up as much alcohol and women as his thin budget permits.
 An awesome ride... Essential reading for anyone who uses travel guidebooks August 29, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A young American, tired of life on Wall Street, takes a job as a travel writer for Lonely Planet. He arrives in Brazil and, amidst the temptations of beautiful women and the all-night partying of Copacabana beach, soon realises that he has been given a task of unimaginable proportions and an equally small stipend with which to fund it.
Eight hundred miles of Brazilian coastline. Sixty towns. Countless villages. Our hero is sent to review and collect the names, locations, phone numbers and email addresses of all relevant hotels, restaurants, bus routes, laundrettes, bars and nightclubs across the whole region. And write something meaningful about them. All in sixty days with virtually no money. And he can't accept freebies (rooms, meals, etc.)
As his financial situation grows increasingly bleak, he struggles with whether to accept such perks of the Lonely Planet name. He also struggles with the fact that what he writes is likely to help rob some of the places he visits of their innocence and independence by contributing to American-style commercial tourism there. His wry analysis of how foreigners behave abroad is both enlightening and hilarious. And his insight into the greater meaning of what he is doing shows us yet another ugly side to (American) commercialism, this time in the tourism industry, and more specifically the guidebook industry.
Does he tell a great story along the way? Definitely. There are healthy measures of sex, drugs, drinking and general debauchery. On the other hand, our hero also encounters police brutality, sustains multiple injuries, fends off insolvency (in the most desperate and creative of ways), and meets a host of colourful characters along the way. (My favourite is Otto, the Israeli ex-commando.)
Overall this is an awesome ride. Great for holiday reading and particularly if you use guidebooks, in which case it's a definite 'must read'. Buy it now!
Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?: A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics, and Professional Hedonism
Hilarious insight into the world of travel writing. August 7, 2008
For one that is very interested in the subject of travel writing (travel essays, guidebooks, etc.) I found this book to be full of often hilarious insights into the mysterious world of guidebook writing. Kohnstamm succeeds in succeeds in ridding almost all of the myths that surround travel writing.
The book is worth reading simply for all of the incredible, seemingly unbelievable stories in the book. However, if you are interested in traveling at all this book is a MUST READ.
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