Smile When You're Lying

Chuck Thompson promises in his book Smile When You’re Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer to dispense with the usual preaching that you find in books like Lonely Planet. Instead, he says, he wants to share “the most memorable experiences … [that editors say] always seem ‘too negative” to put into print. And for the first half of the book, he doesn’t disappoint. His stories about teaching English in Japan at 22, searching for coke in Alaska at 3 in the morning, helping a friend have “Korean sex” before getting married, all have a charm that’s so straightforward and honest that, though the material is rather frat-boyish with a healthy side of misogeny, it never occurs to you to hold it against him. After all, he's only reporting the reality of his experiences back to you. Rarely, if ever is he a willing, active participant.

You fall for his upfront candor, rejoicing in his successes and keenly feeling his failures. Not only that, but he writes so convincingly that you have to agree with everything he says. You begrudge Alaskans for selling their souls, and America’s “last frontier,” to the oil companies. You want to head to Ensenada and scour the docks for the Slayamahi II (or, by now, possibly III or IV), and ask Ernesto the owner for a ride. You want to meet Shanghai Bob, shake his hand and buy him a beer. And you definitely don’t want to visit the Caribbean again until the place starts to feel a little less like Disneyland on the beach. The whole first half of the book is as rewarding as being a Red Sox fan in 2007 – after years of peddling through the same old disappointments, you’ve finally gotten your money’s worth in gold.

Which is why the shift in the middle of the book comes as such a serious insult. Chapter Seven, promisingly entitled What Lazy Writers, Lonely Planet, and Your Favorite Travel Magazine Don’t Want You To Know, has a different tone than the rest of the book, one that you’re really not interested in after getting so many laughs and great scenes from the first six chapters. After traveling the world with Chuck, the reader now watches him pack up his bags and get ready for the excitement of what we already know will be the doomed venture of Travelocity magazine, operating out of that glorious location of … Dallas.

Up to that point, Thompson has pointed out several habits and tendencies of travel writers that, he says, annoy him to no end. Like putting the writer into the center of the story. He hates that. He does, however, make an exception when it comes to his own writing. You raise an eyebrow at his hypocrisy, but by the time he says it, a third of the way through the book, you have to forgive him. He’s just made it too agreeable for you already. Any page that doesn’t elicit a laugh is an oddity. But the one place where I wish he’d followed his own advice would be in Chapter Seven. Before Chapter Seven, you feel you’ve been traveling with Chuck, an arm around his shoulder as he confides in you all the secret stories he’s never confided in anyone before. Then, suddenly, you feel as if you’re being preached at by a minister on Sunday, reaming against the travel writing industry. He promises “a few highlights” of his manual on what to avoid in travel writing, and gives you ten pages. A few anecdotes bring a smile to your face, but for the most part you feel as if you’re watching a car wreck and you can’t possibly stop it. How can the Dallas branch of the Bible Belt compare to Bangkok pussy writing?