Bad Trips
Half the pleasure of reading the stories collected together inBad Trips, an anthology of travel writing, is imagining the  authors so wonderfully out of place! Picture Indian author Anita Desai  in wintry Norway or proper British writer Jonathan Raban in a seamy  Louisiana pool hall. Italian semiotician Umberto Eco in Southern  California? David Mamet in the Caribbean? Before you've even started,  you know it's going to be good. The stories range from laugh-out-loud  funny (Martin Amis on the start of a harrowing flight from London:  "When it comes to flying, I am a nervous passenger but a confident  drinker and Valium-swallower. And although I wasn't exactly goosing the  stewardesses or singing 'Viva Espana'... I was certainly in holiday  mood....") to the poignant. (James Trevor describing his worst journey, the trip he took back to an Irish boarding school when  he was 12: "By the time we reached Bunclody the odour of long-boiled cabbage that hung about the school's kitchen and dining room was  beginning to mingle with the bus's exhaust fumes. By Kildavin, the  noise of the play yard echoed; by Tullow, Monsieur Bertain was striking  the blackboard in a fury. 'Tell us why, if you would,' the sarcastic  science master invited in Rathvilly. 'Tell us why you lack  intelligence.'")Some of the authors included in this anthology are well known in other genres--Eco, Mamet, and John Updike, for example--while others such as  Jan Morris and Redmond O'Hanlon have made a name for themselves  primarily as travel writers; but whether you recognize the names or  not, you'll find all the stories inBad Tripswell worth reading  and then coming back to time and again.