Haunted Traveler: An Imaginary Memoir

by Barry Yourgrau

Book Overview

A blend of travel writing, fable, and adventure tale, offers an exploration of the idea and personal nature of travel. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1559704829
• ISBN13: 9781559704823
• Release Date: May 1999
• Publisher: Arcade Pub
• Length: 202 Pages
• Weight: 0.98 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Bizarre and Surreal and Touching

Many things about this book are unconventional: it is written in the first person present tense; the chapters are very short; many of the stories are surreal and could not actually take place in the real world; and the stories themselves are not really connected by anything but the narrator's travels from one place to the next. And it's those unconventional aspects that I loved about this book. It was like taking a trip to familiar and yet not-quite-real worlds in which the only constant is the narrator's sense of sad alienation and desire to find a place where he feels he belongs. But because the tone of the book is humorous and often absurd, the mood of alienation does not get depressing or overly serious. This book is a trip worth taking.

Be sure to place this book in your rucksack

I read most of Haunted Traveller while waiting for a train, about to embark on a several hour journey. I'm usually excited by traveling, but after reading these stories, I felt as if I had already taken wonderful journey--and had the urge to return my ticket...Terrific, imaginative fiction

A Haunted Journey... Indeed

The book was thrown my way by someone who read my review of The Beach on this very sight. He raved in a couple short lines about what an amazing book "Haunted Traveller" was... Haunting is more like it. Fragments that create a lucid dreamlike world for adults. This is quite a novel.

Pretty amazing

Hadn't heard of this Barry Y'grau before, a friend turned me on to the book. Pretty amazing, indeed. Book flap copy talks about "Paul Bowles meets Monty Python" (wha?) & "lovechild of Joseph Campbell and Anais Nin" (wha? wha?)-- but all a feeble honrable attempt to give a handle on work like nothing else this one reader has ever read. Fantastical travel, I'd have to call it, mixing humor with spooky and well, plain amazing. Book flap says "postmodern"... which is like saying David Cronenberg is, well, postmodern. Oh well, yes. If you like travel writing at all, climb on board this strange wild astounding book. He has a couple others out, I shall be giving a crack at those too.

Genius genius genius

I have been reading Barry Yourgrau since Man Jumps out of an Airplane and he is one brilliant, funny guy. The Haunted Traveler is definitely his most ambitious and best book so far. He writes in these short short stories, like three pages each. In this book the stories are closely linked, with the same main character and there's a thematic building going on throughout. It feels almost like a novel. It's just an amazingly satisfying reading experience, both rich and entertaining. I loved it. I love Barry Yourgrau and I love this book.