On Writing Well: Chapter 13 Summary & Analysis

Places are the second most important subject in nonfiction, after people. But most writing about them is terrible. Travelers tend to be overly enthusiastic about their travels, and they often imagine that their experience is unique and original, when it isn’t. Travel writers often give readers excessive, unnecessary detail. They also frequently use a tired style full of gaudy adjectives (like “dappled”), clichés (like “old meets new”), and altogether meaningless words (like “charm”). Zinsser offers two rules for effective travel writing: “choose your words with unusual care” and “be intensely selective” about which material to include.

Zinsser gives several examples of effective travel writing. In a passage about driving out to a San Bernardino crime scene, Joan Didion carefully chooses details that evoke Southern California’s tacky landscape and superficial culture. John McPhee describes the intolerable wind in cramped Juneau, Alaska in order to explain why some officials want to move the state capital elsewhere; he contrasts Juneau with Anchorage, which he compares to any ordinary American city. His descriptions are successful because he identifies the key idea associated with each place.

Similarly, Jonathan Raban compares the Mississippi River that runs through Minnesota’s perfect square farms to nature sending the land’s pious Lutherans a message about sin and rebellion. Zinsser adds three more examples of writers who successfully identify three places’ distinctive traits: Jack Agueros describes diverse East Harlem, Prudence Mackintosh describes the Southern traditions in her small Texas town, and Tom Wolfe describes the perfectly flat seasonal lake beds that made the Mojave Desert the perfect place for a military base. Zinsser encourages his readers to practice writing about places this way. They don’t have to go far away—they should simply go somewhere and figure out what’s unique about it.

Often, the human element is what makes places interesting. For instance, V.S. Pritchett describes Istanbul’s mix of bustle and glory by analyzing the way Turkish men sit. Many notable travel articles focus on what the writer learns about themselves while traveling, and describing people’s activity is an excellent way to make a place seem alive. Zinsser excerpts James Baldwin’s description of preaching in a Harlem church in The Fire Next Time, which focuses on the congregants’ motion and excitement.

Zinsser says that it’s still possible to find fresh thoughts about much-visited places. To prove this, he wrote a book about 15 of the U.S.’s most popular and important tourist destinations. At each site, he asked people why they thought so many people visited it, in a quest to understand each place’s story. He excerpts the remarkable stories he heard from custodians at Mount Rushmore, Kitty Hawk, and Yellowstone National Park. There’s a beautiful story behind every place, Zinsser concludes, but it’s better to let people who are connected to that place tell it, rather than trying to take it over.