Mark Salzman on the easy cliches of travel writing

“One strike against travel writing, though, is that many writers who describe familiar places without making shallow or trite observations suddenly run into trouble when they go on the road. They seem to lose their inhibitions when they find themselves in exotic surroundings, and start telling us how red-cheeked and healthy the children look, how much more in touch with nature Third World farmers appear, or how dull-witted the natives look because they stare at foreigners with their mouths hanging open. Part of the fun of being a traveler is making broad generalizations from what little you see and hear, or discovering that there is a grain of truth in many cultural stereotypes, but those sorts of insights don’t necessarily belong in a book.”
–Mark Salzman, in They Went: The Art and Craft of Travel Writing (1991)