Wonderlands: Good Gay Travel Writing

Kadushin, Raphael, editor. "Wonderlands: Good Gay Travel Writing", University of Wisconsin, 2004. The Delights of Gay Travel Amos Lassen Raphael Kadushin has compiled nineteen gay writers' personal reflections of travel in "Wonderlands" and it is a pleasure trip of a read. The title could have used another form of the word "wonder" and it would have fit perfectly. "Wonderlands" is wanderlust of features. The authors represented here are a mixture of established gay writers and the best of the new writers and they all have one thing in common--the excitement of travel. They write of all over the world and each manages to find something unexpected. The writing is uniformly good--so good that it makes the reader want to book a flight and get away from it all. The entries all seem to share a link and that seems to me to be that we all travel because we are looking for something. What we find, regardless of what it is, turns out to be a surprise. To me "Wonderlands" was such a surprise--19 surprises in fact--I got to share everyone's and not even have to pack. Edmund White takes us to the Sahara and Tim Miller talks of sleeping all over the world. Michael Lowenthal has an encounter in the highlands of Scotland and Mack Freidman goes to the wilds of Alaska. Syria is visited by Robert Tewdwr Moss and Edward Field has tea with Paul Bowles in Tangier. Colm Tobin writes about an adventure in Spain and Wayne Koestenbaum tours Vienna and sees both sides of the cultural scene there. For Philip Gambone, Asia offers him a new start while Raphael Kadushin spends spring with the Dutch. There are also selections from Brian Bouldrey, Bruce Shenitz, J.S. Marcus, Boyer Rickel, Mitch Cullin, Alistair McCartney, Matthew Link and David Masello. The anthology is compelling and I felt as I learned about a place, I learned about the author and myself as well.

This book contains great travel writing by some of todays top authors. This is not a sex travel writing, but is eroctic at times as well as humorous and gives the mind plenty to comtemplate. We need more books like this one. Get it and take a trip.