Synopsis
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Rolf Potts is known as a postmodern travel writer, a writer aware of how one's experiences of "exotic" locations are always affected by our preconceptions about the culture, and attuned to the often disorienting impact of globalization on our hunt for authentic experience. As a result, some of his travel essays from the last 10 years use peculiar formal techniques, as in his "The Art of Writing a Story About Walking Across Andorra," in which he writes in the second-person to parody the conventions and clichés of the travel narrative. Despite his awareness of the paradoxes of 21st-century travel writing, Potts also understands the timeless allure of a good story well told, and his attention to local color and human drama are undiminished by his unconventional approach to the genre.
