December 21, 2011

Reading Travel: New and Old Books We Loved This Year - Features - World Hum

Rolf Potts

My top two travel-oriented books of the year would have to be Karl Taro Greenfeld’s short story collection, NowTrends, and On Holiday, Orvar Lofgren’s history of vacationing. Greenfeld’s book (which was published by Short Flight/Long Drive Books, a tiny independent press) offers an authentic and affecting look into various corners of Asia, Europe, and North America. Though obviously fiction, NowTrends has a journalistic attention to setting and detail—which is no surprise, since Greenfeld cut his teeth as a writer for magazines like Time and Sports Illustrated.

Rolf Potts is the author of Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel, and Marco Polo Didn’t Go There: Stories and Revelations From One Decade as a Postmodern Travel Writer.


See Post tags #Karl Taro Greenfeld #NowTrends #SF/LD minibooks #Rolf Potts #World Hum

February 28, 2012

our favorite thing said about the newest issue (maybe any issue) yet (re: specifically, Rolf Potts’s “Remixing Reality”) it is hard to describe my happiness at reading the David Shields response. This is the response that Reality Hunger needed, and I’m glad it came from you guys. Embedding the story (particularly that story) within the piece was genius because it demonstrates its point (rather than talking about what it wants to talk about), and the collage/plagiarism technique was utilized in a much more subtle and effective way than in Reality Hunger itself—it reads so cohesively, nothing tipped me off that they were pulled from other sources—and this is what makes the piece for me. Potts’ use of unattributed quotes ends up being an act of humility (since some of the best lines and ideas in the piece are actually his) and it reads as a collective work, whereas the pronounced lack of this kind of humility in Shields’ book is a big part of what makes one want to throw it out into traffic. All this just being a long-winded way of saying thanks for publishing this, and I look forward to reading the rest of the issue. -Casey O’Neil (HOBART 13)

our favorite thing said about the newest issue (maybe any issue) yet (re: specifically, Rolf Potts’s “Remixing Reality”)

it is hard to describe my happiness at reading the David Shields response. This is the response that Reality Hunger needed, and I’m glad it came from you guys. Embedding the story (particularly that story) within the piece was genius because it demonstrates its point (rather than talking about what it wants to talk about), and the collage/plagiarism technique was utilized in a much more subtle and effective way than in Reality Hunger itself—it reads so cohesively, nothing tipped me off that they were pulled from other sources—and this is what makes the piece for me. Potts’ use of unattributed quotes ends up being an act of humility (since some of the best lines and ideas in the piece are actually his) and it reads as a collective work, whereas the pronounced lack of this kind of humility in Shields’ book is a big part of what makes one want to throw it out into traffic. All this just being a long-winded way of saying thanks for publishing this, and I look forward to reading the rest of the issue.

-Casey O’Neil

(HOBART 13)

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See Post tags #Hobart 13 #rolf potts #David Shields #Reality Hunger