Recommend me some travel writing a la Holidays in Hell by PJ O’Rourke?
June 7, 2018 11:42 AM   Subscribe

I was browsing the Travel section of my local bookstore recently and was amazed at the paucity of gonzo-style travel writing a la PJ O’Rourke's Holidays in Hell.

I loved the irreverence, sharp observations and his hanging-out-with-real-people approach - talking to a street seller one minute and a politician the next when trying to figure out what makes a country tick. So, any book recommendations that have a similar style of writing?
posted by jacobean to Media & Arts (21 answers total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: Bill Bryson is fucking brilliant. In a Sunburned Country, Notes from a Small Island, A Walk in the Woods, etc. are all classics of the genre.
posted by MiraK at 12:02 PM on June 7, 2018 [6 favorites]


Ooh! Check out Tim Cahill?
posted by The otter lady at 12:02 PM on June 7, 2018 [3 favorites]


Bill Bryson's Notes From a Small Island is a fun read.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:02 PM on June 7, 2018


Also Dave Barry's early stuff has some travel adventures, like Dave Barry Does Japan.
posted by The otter lady at 12:10 PM on June 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


Travels in Siberia is a good one.

And all of Paul Theroux's stuff. He has a reputation as a curmudgeon, I guess, but I always enjoy his travel writing.
posted by something something at 12:21 PM on June 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


America by Jean Baudrillard might tickle your fancy.
posted by rhizome at 1:12 PM on June 7, 2018


Paul Theroux is a curmudgeon; it’s part of the appeal, but it can get grating.

His The Great Railway Bazaar (1975) is great and now a view of a vanished time (the Soviet Union, the Vietnam War, etc.). I thought that Dark Star Safari (2002) was also particularly good — he seems to have a genuine affection for Africa and it tones down his curmudgeonly side, leaving the keen observation and great writing more room to breathe. Quite a lot of opportunities for getting himself killed, lots of talking to people and the abllity to talk to at least some of the locals in their own language.

Eric Newby was a fine writer too. The Big Red Train Ride (1978) covers some of the same ground as Bazaar. A bit less of the gonzo, but good none the less.
posted by Quinbus Flestrin at 1:30 PM on June 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


Congo Journey by Redmond O'Hanlon is in places quite funny as well as terrifying.
Well written gonzo travel writing

The U.S. edition may be titled:
No Mercy: A journey to the heart of the Congo
posted by yyz at 1:38 PM on June 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


Another Redmond O'Hanlon recommendation is Into The Heart of Borneo - some of the funniest travel writing I've ever read are in that book. Something about his eating a bowl of spaghetti in the jungle, except it turns out not to be spaghetti, but worms.
posted by HeyAllie at 1:41 PM on June 7, 2018


Martha Gellhorn, Travels with Myself and Another. Foreign correspondent describes her worst journeys; unflinching and absolutely riveting.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 2:07 PM on June 7, 2018


I like Congo Journey / No Mercy by Redmond O'Hanlon because it is actually a deconstruction of the gonzo travel journalism of his previous travelogues, and of the low-EQ of a genre that typically (like O'Rourke) has very little self-awareness.

In the book, O'Hanlon literally deconstructs his very self.
posted by JamesBay at 2:21 PM on June 7, 2018


Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell.
posted by Duffington at 2:28 PM on June 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways: A Journey into America: He lost his job and his wife left him on the same day, so he drove all around the US with his dog. (The "blue highways" are the smaller ones off the interstates that were marked with blue lines on his map.)
posted by kirkaracha at 2:47 PM on June 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


Another vote for Bill Bryson and Tim Cahill.

Travels in Siberia is a good one.

His (Ian Frazier's) Great Plains is good, too.

Tony Horwitz: Confederates in the Attic, A Voyage Long and Strange, and Blue Latitudes.

Thurston Clarke, Equator: A Journey
posted by kirkaracha at 2:54 PM on June 7, 2018 [2 favorites]


Never read any PJ O’Rourke but by what's been recommended I'd try Tony Horwitz' Baghdad Without A Map.
posted by Rash at 3:37 PM on June 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


And for hitchinghiking from one end of Japan to the other, see Will Ferguson's Hokkaido Highway Blues.
posted by Rash at 3:41 PM on June 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


Jonathan Raban's 'Hunting Mr Heartbreak' is more on the literary side but it's a cracking read, the Brit author stays in three different parts of the US and takes on an identity for each.
posted by Sebmojo at 4:56 PM on June 7, 2018


Another Eric Newby, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, book extract from The Observer
posted by glasseyes at 3:34 AM on June 8, 2018


Best answer: (Plenty of lines from "Holidays in Hell" are still stuck in my head years later: I love that book.)

Cahill and Bryson are different from each other, but definitely both good.

"The Last Travels of a Fat Bulldog" by George Courtauld is the opposite of gonzo, but pretty interesting. He's a Queen's Messenger and travels around the Commonwealth carrying the Diplomatic Bag.

British political writer Matthew Parris wrote a travel book in the early 1990s called "Inca-Kola" that's about a trip to Peru. I enjoyed it at the time.

"Round Ireland With a Fridge" by Tony Hawks With An "S" is very gonzo, but ultimately I was a little disappointed by the end -- though it did very much remind me why I enjoyed my visits there. :7)
posted by wenestvedt at 9:19 AM on June 8, 2018


Bruce Chatwin! Bruce is excellent for visiting distant places, more obscure the better, and comparing notes with old explorers from years past.
posted by ovvl at 7:43 PM on June 8, 2018


Response by poster: Some truly excellent recommendations here.

I finally plumped for Bryson's In a Sunburned Country.

Not the most intellectual of the recommendations I know but it's funny, light and breezy style make the perfect summer reading.

Finally, it would be remiss of me to close this thread on gonzo-style reportage and not mention the truly brilliant Anthony Bourdain (RIP) who books where will be be a classic of this genre.
posted by jacobean at 12:04 PM on June 9, 2018


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