Episode #003
F E A T U R I N G * 9 4 * B O N U S * S E C O N D S
Paul Brady (@p_brady) offers the SSTS* its first-ever viewer query: which is the preference, window or aisle. We've turned over the question to some travel experts: Jim Benning (World Hum, @jimbenning) Pam Mandel (of Nerd'sEyeView), Stefanie Michaels (aka "AdventureGirl"), Jessica Spiegel (Boots'n'All, and @italylogue) plus Tony and Maureen Wheeler (the founders of Lonely Planet).
Plus Pat.
...& WHAT ABOUT MARK TWAIN?
Paul also wondered about Mark Twain -- is he the most underrated or overrated travel writer?
It's an interesting question, and one I had been thinking
of as I just finished Life on the Mississippi, a sloppy book that begins with Twain's reports of life during the steamboat era when the river bank moved so often that parts of Mississippi state regularly found itself on the Louisiana side of the border. Then follows his experiences years later, when he revisited well after the steamboat era was nearly over.Parts should be skipped, parts relished -- like most of his writing.
But I can't call him overrated. Twain tends to color all his books with a fictive landscape of scalliwags, boasters and liars. Even his non-fiction. It can be distracting, but it has it place. I think Innocents Abroad, following his Europe-by-ship trip, does to Europe a bit what Bob Dylan's Bringing it All Back Home album did to the British Invasion. Kinda made fun of it.
Dylan's cover is lined with American contributions to pop music -- sort of calling the Beatles the ladle to American soup -- while Twain, and his moustache, reversed needling inspection of the Tocquevilles and Dickenses. America hadn't seen that before. And it struck a chord. In his lifetime, Innocents Abroad outsold Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.
Plus the "is he dead?" jokes are hilarious.
So I give the guy credit. You with me?
--> The SSTS welcomes all travel queries.
*SSTS = 76-Second Travel Show
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