 |
|
|
 Entertainment | Books | December 2007 
Rogue Writer
 Eric Morrison - Juneau Empire
go to original
| | Author Chuck Thompson |
After years of churning out superlative-laced copy at the behest of travel magazines beholden to their advertisers, Juneau-Douglas High School graduate Chuck Thompson wanted to write a book to expose an industry that uses fear and greed to manipulate the realities of destinations across the globe.
In his book, "Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer," published by Holt Paperbacks, Thompson takes the travel writing industry to task while sharing colorful vignettes about his adventures from our own backyard in Lemon Creek, through the debauchery-driven dives of Southeast Asia, to the slums of East Germany and many places in between.
Hooligan caught up with Thompson recently to talk about the brothels of Thailand, cocaine use in Alaska's Capitol during the oil-boom days, the contemporary American traveler, his days as a writer for magazines such as Maxim, a recent adventure to civil-war ravaged Africa, and how the travel writing industry is receiving his book.
Hooligan: So did you learn any new or valuable travel lessons from your trip to Africa?
Thompson: I learned how to bribe a cop in Africa, I guess.
I mean, I've bribed them in other places, but it's a little different (in the Congo). You sort of have to become buddies with them. They start out really aggressive with you, and they start shouting at you and demanding hundreds of dollars. ...
... You're supposed to kind of return their intensity at about a half-notch below what they're giving to you, and then they'll kind of respect you and start asking you questions about yourself. ...
By the end of it they just sort of say, 'Hey, man, I haven't been paid in three or four months. The government's broke. Can you help me out with a couple of bucks?'
So that's what you do.
Hooligan: For someone who has never traveled abroad before, where would you recommend someone start?
Thompson: I always tell people to go to Mexico, because I find that a lot of people are a little bit intimidated by Mexico. There's no reason to be intimidated about Mexico. It's an incredible country.
It's not just the beaches either. It's not just these Cabo, Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta areas. It's an incredibly diverse and rich country with mountains, and deserts, and forests, and big cities, and medium cities, and rivers - I mean, it's really a rich, fantastic place to visit.
And to me ... they're basically the most hospitable people on Earth, so it's so strange to me that people are intimidated by the reputation of Mexico. I spend a chapter in the book kind of talking about that.
Hooligan: In the book you talk about wanting to get the (expletive deleted) out of Juneau while growing up. Do you think living in Juneau inspires people to get out and see the world?
Thompson: I think I'm kind of a product of what living in Juneau does. Anything outside of Juneau looks sort of fantastic and exotic. I have no idea what the stats are, but wouldn't you guess the per capita traveler in Alaska is well above the national average?
Hooligan: I would think so.
Thompson: I think how I ended up traveling and moving around was certainly a product of growing up in Juneau.
Hooligan: One of the things I enjoyed the most about the book is the brutal honesty. Have you been catching any hell from the travel industry about the book?
Thompson: Not yet. The book's only been out a couple of weeks, and most of the reviews have been really positive. Most people I know that work in the business have been sending me e-mails or calling, saying, 'Man this is the book every travel writer wishes he wrote,' or 'I really wish I wrote this book.' For right now, it's been kind of positive. ...
I really made an effort to not conceal anything. Right from the start, the book opens up with a couple of Aussies toking up in a bar and some professional girls performing a physical act on the patron next to him in the bar, so there is sort of that grabber thing. I know it's going to probably turn some people off to the book - that start - but at the same time it's there to let people know that I'm not going to try and gloss over anything or hide any of the ugly details.
Hooligan: Are you at all worried that the honesty might affect your career as a travel writer?
Thompson: I'm not really worried about that because I don't want to write that kind of garbage travel copy any longer. I'm not even interested in even working for magazines that would have problems with this book. ... For the most part, the last couple of years I have been writing for magazines like Men's Journal and Esquire ... and those kinds of magazines aren't really beholden to travel advertisers, so they're happy to let me write the way I want to write.
Hooligan: I thought it was pretty courageous to be so personal in the book. Were you at all nervous about putting some of that out there, particularly talking about drug use in the Capitol?
Thompson: Absolutely. I was pretty nervous about that. Everybody I named in the book I got their permission far ahead of time to kind of talk about that stuff, and people who didn't want me to include them, I didn't. But yeah, it made me a little bit nervous. It's kind of weird stuff to admit, but at the same time it happened, and as I said, I didn't want to do the usual travel-writer thing and gloss over any of this stuff.
I know there were a few things in the book that surprised my mother, and she wasn't really happy. We had a rather long phone call after she looked at the book.
I said, 'God, Mom, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.'
She said, 'I never knew those things. Why didn't you tell me?'
'I'm not going to tell you I'm outside a coke dealer's trailer in Lemon Creek at 3:30, begging for product.'
Hooligan: How do you rate Juneau as a travel destination?
Thompson: I don't know, I guess Juneau is fantastic. It's a little bit hard for me to see it as a travel destination because I never really approached it as that. Even though I'm not living there right now, I always considered myself a Juneauite, or at least a Juneauite in exile.
Hooligan: I guess more what I was meaning is do you have concerns about how Juneau has evolved over the last five, 10, 20 years as a tourist destination? Do you think it has affected the community adversely at all? Or has it been better to have this influx of tourism?
Thompson: That's a good question. I think the answer to that is, on the whole, it has had a positive effect on the city. ... But I think that, as with anything, there are parts of it that I regret a little bit. When you have an influx of so many people as we have now, and when the downtown corridor kind of willingly made itself over, then sure you lose some things, like what the town used to be.
Hooligan: In the book you say about 20 percent of Americans have passports. Do you think it's becoming more difficult for Americans to travel abroad, or is it over-hyped?
Thompson: No, I don't think it's becoming more difficult. When I first started traveling overseas 20 years ago, just being an American made you popular in most places. And now, it makes you either slightly unpopular or they just ignore you. They don't really rush to be your friend any longer. But I haven't really found that there is out-and-out hostility out there.
Let me back up. I have had a few experiences and run-ins with out-and-out hostility simply because I'm American, but those are still the exception, not the rule.
What to expect
Excerpts from "Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer," by former Juneau resident Chuck Thompson:
"Drugs changed my life in the seventh grade. Not because I started taking them, but because everyone else did. In the 1970s, Juneau, Alaska, ran on drugs. Amphetamine-fueled fishermen maximizing time on the water. Stoned state employees coping with dark winters and cubicle summers. Coked-up Capitol workers more connected to the well-being of South American coca farmers than constituents back home. Even before our national acquiescence to antidepressants, everyone apart from my parents seemed to be on something." Page 48.
"It's impossible for me to be civil about Anchorage given the fact that those scheming oil whores have been trying to steal the capital from Juneau ever since I was a kid." Page 167.
"There's an old Chinese saying that goes, 'One of life's greatest pleasures is to meet a countryman in a strange land.' This might have been true during the Tang Dynasty, but it's unlikely that China's ancient wanderers ever suffered the disappointment of trekking miles to the quintessential Thai café, ordering a bowl of the country's most exemplary noodle soup, then looking up to find three tables of scraggly travelers opened to the exact same page in their dog-eared Lonely Planets. This actually happened to me in 1997." Page 183.
"First the bad news: Americans are the new Germans. Around the planet, 'America' has become a byword for the kind of pushy, greedy, arrogant, ignorant, scheming, intolerant, hypocritical, violent, militaristic, goose-stepping, blood-gulping, Limbaugh-worshipping bullies that civilized people since time eternal have despised and occasionally battled to the death. ... All you 82 million Germans can start thanking the United States anytime now for taking those goat horns off your heads." Page 301. |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us