It began with a famous novelist from Lowell, Massachusetts: Jack Kerouac.
The Beginning of Narrative Travel Writing
Travel writing has existed for thousands of years, for as long as people have explored lands and seas. They kept daily diaries and travel logs.
But the type of writing about life as a wandering traveler began with Kerouac and his friends – Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassidy -- who would come to be known synonymously with the Beat Generation.
Kerouac's work may be considered an unlikely beginning for the American travel literature genre. He was a novelist, and travel writing is typically non-fiction, stories told in truth as the writer perceived his or her experiences.
Kerouac’s On the Road was published by Viking Press in 1957, and though it is fiction, it is considered largely based on experiences. It recounted tales of life en route from one coast to the other, time spent with friends in locations – such as Denver and San Francisco -- and time spent in Mexico.
The work has been viewed by many as a seminal work that has fueled generations of vagabonds, adventurers, counter-culturalists, travelers, writers and poets among other free-spirited, creative sorts of people.
When the book reached its 50th anniversary since first publication, in 2007, Viking Press released a bound version from the unedited text of Kerouac’s original scroll (he typed the entire manuscript on paper spliced together page by page, resulting a 120-foot long story). Anticipating the late-summer 2007 release in the United States, National Public Radio’s Andrea Shea reported:
“This September marks 50 years since Jack Kerouac's On the Road hit bookshelves, stirred controversy and spoke — in a new voice — to a generation of readers. Today the beat travelogue continues to sell 100,000 copies a year in the U.S. and Canada alone.”
Travel Writers Since Jack Kerouac
There have likely been countless cross-country American travelers who’ve jotted a story or two along the way. Several traveling writers have made names from it.
John Steinbeck published “Travels with Charley” in 1962, the year he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. William Least Heat-Moon published his first book, Blue Highways, which also became a classic after initially spending several months camped on the New York Times bestseller list. Bill Bryson became known after succeeding with The Lost Continent.
There have been a handful of others to reach acclaim as travel book authors, but most recently, the name on the tips of nomadic globe trotters' tongues has been Rolf Potts, a book author (Vagabonding) and Internet writer (Vagabonding.net) who has put a 21st Century, global, Internet-based twist on the American roadtrip tradition.
In an article written by Tim Patterson and posted at bravenewtraveler.com, Potts is asked to comment on the suggestion that he is a contemporary Jack Kerouac.
Patterson: USA Today once called you “Jack Kerouac for the Internet Age.” How does your approach to travel writing match with the lifestyle Kerouac glorified fifty years ago in On the Road and Dharma Bums? And what does it mean to be a writer for the Internet Age?
Potts: I think the comparison to Kerouac was more metaphorical than practical or literal. Kerouac introduced a generation of Americans to the joys of open-ended travel, and I’m trying to do the same. Past that, it’s difficult to make applied comparisons, because travel - and society in general - has changed a lot in 50 years.
Biographically and philosophically I don’t always follow in Kerouac’s footsteps, but I share his belief that travel anywhere carries this amazing, potentially life-changing hum of possibility: that there is so much to be gained by just mustering up the courage and hitting the road.
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