From , an interview with Paul Theroux. Theroux states, "I wanted to memorialize the instance of the traveler/painter/writer indulging in creating a personal myth. There is a mythomania that is also one of the impulses of the traveler—compulsions, really. Detached from home, plunged into the exotic, the traveler can live out fantasies that are impossible on home ground."

More>>

Atlantic Online <http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/int2004-03-31.htm>

The Nonfiction Universe interviews poet and nonfiction writer Mark Levine. Levine states,

"For me, writing--whether poetry or prose--is how one gets to grapple with the "given":  with the data that each of us confronts as the stuff of history, memory, reportage, or everyday experience.  In order to arrive at something that feels like the 'truth' of the matter, I think we often need to strip an experience of interpretations and ideas--what we believe we "understand" about it--and try to encounter it as if for the first time. That's hard to do-especially under deadline; and especially in commercial magazines where there's not much tolerance for the kind of unmediated ambiguity that poets tend to recognize as the attribute of 'truth.'"

More>>