How travel writing becomes literature

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](http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-last-of-the-lone-wanderers/?utm_source=social_media&utm_medium=facebook))

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