Kohnstamm has read too much Bukowski, Hemingway, and Hunter S. Thompson, and maybe he's thought about them too little.

Whatever the narrator may think (I'm doing Kohnstamm the favour of assuming that he's different from his book), constant substance abuse and promiscuity do not make him enviably manly - they make him a frat boy. As the above authors prove, you can write about being drunk & stoned out of your brain, but none of them had that as their sole theme.

He thoroughly alienated me during the first several chapters, mostly complaining about how he cheated himself out of a ride on the 90s gravy train by going to grad school. To be fair, he does show himself getting a reality check later in the book. If only he'd done the same for his life goal of sleeping with one or more women from each continent.

His squalid adventures in Brazil, reeling from one manipulating woman to the next, are interspersed with some decent writing about the experience of writing the Lonely Planet on no dollars a day. Then, just as you start getting interested, he starts talking about how drunk he is again. As designated drivers know, there is nothing so dull as listening to people wail "I'm so waaaaasted", believing that this is interesting conversation.

This is callow piffle that makes Chuck Thompson's similar but better "Smile When You're Lying" look like Pulitzer material. Better yet, read Hunter S. Thompson covering the Kentucky Derby with Ralph Steadman. ( )

In his book Do Travel Writers go to Hell?, intrepid traveler Thomas Kohnstamm does a fascinating job of weighing his own addiction of travel with the highly unreasonable expectations that are associated with being a guidebook travel writer. Also, Kohnstamm admirably demolishes the popular conception that travel writing is some sort of dream job; his consistently neurotic analysis of the futile planning, budgeting and writing for Lonely Planet, or any guidebook publisher for that matter is not only sobering, but warranted for those blinded by their travel-induced naivete.

Kohnstamm begins by disclaiming his addiction to travel and the atypical circumstances in which he decides to pursue it as a career. He subsequently embarks on his adventure to cover northeastern Brasil's most likely and unlikely tourist destinations (on behalf of Lonely Planet) and the people he meets along the way. It is here that one arrives at a recurring theme throughout the book: it is not necessarily the places one visits but the people met that makes the story worthwhile.

Insufficient stipends and unreasonable deadlines are just two of the variables obstructing Kohnstamm's progress. Throw in a constant stream of Brasilian cachaca, drugs, late nights/early mornings, the gamut of intestinal illnesses, opportunistic thugs as well as the usual bribery schemes (among all the players), and it is no wonder that the journey itself is truly the thing.

The book, however, is not simply a retelling of Kohnstamm's escapades. It does raise a lot of questions even for the novice traveler. He ponders the implications of cultural relativism, the apparent lawlessness and corruption, as well as the increasing commercialization and urbanization of Brasil at the expense of its history and identity. Not to mention the fringe benefits of writing positive reviews, especially if those reviews are generated by the favors exhibited on behalf the restaurant or hotel one is writing about.

If there was one thing I regretted about the book, apart from my envy, it is Kohnstamm's overindulgence at the expense of his craft. Granted, his wild nights performing "research" forces harried and slightly unethical writing; however, the descriptions of his supporting characters would subsequently suffer. Therein lies the dilemma: is this a travel writing book or a book about travel writing? The lines aren't always clear.

Kohnstamm does well to capture the sweltering zeitgeist of Northeastern Brasil and the plight of the travel writer, thereby leaving the reader with a nuanced yet realistic depiction of the industry, and tells a captivating story while doing so. His advice: if you really love to travel, think twice about making it your occupation. ( )

This book was profiled on National Public Radio and positioned there as an expose on the travel industry: how travel writers would review locales without ever going there, would use expense account money for living the high-life, and potentially show other borderline tricks of the trade. Once read, the book is really more of a memoir of a young, raunchy, travel-addled seeker escaping from the cubicle world of post-college career to a job 'on the wild side'. Unfortunately, the author brings himself on the trip. Before the author ever makes it to Northern Brazil, his first travel-writing assignment, he is involved in what apparently a regular occurrence of drunken fighting, seduction, drugs and general bad manners. The author tries to glamorize breaking up with his girlfriend, while actually misses the chance and adds no flourish to his rarely done and everyone-must-fantasize-about quitting his difficult boss and onerous job. Cue the necessary step back into his childhood, growing up, traveling experience and skill, and current emotions about work, marriage, lifestyle, etc. When we finally make it overseas, the author is persuasive in making the reader feel overwhelmed at the sheer number of towns, cities, and beaches he has to cover to even come close to not spending thousands of his own money (which he does not have) to accurately write his travel guide for this remote area. Later forays into multiple potential female 'partners', renting apartments vs. hotels, hoteliers, and throw in the odd Israeli ex-Mossad itinerant, and you have yourself a rockin' living-on-the-edge good time. Unfortunately, the book is only moderately well written and is much more an Augusten Burroughs saga of a troubled heterosexual trying to suck up as much alcohol and women as his thin budget permits. ( )