William Zinsser on what it takes for travel writing to move from a personal narrative into the realm of literature.
The worlds that those restless hermits wrote about were often interior worlds, tinged with mysticism, and it could hardly be otherwise; they achieved their destiny by following trails that weren’t on any map. But what raises travel writing to literature is not what the writer brings to a place, but what the place draws out of the writer.
(via Zinsser on Friday: The Last of the Lone Wanderers | The American Scholar)