Thursday, June 24, 2004
Touche Terry! And that nude was tasteful and in context you prude!
Dave - a bit harsh on Outside, they are a business after all and therefore have to attempt to pander to an audience that they know they can have. I can think of plenty of other magazines, whether they are in Asia, Europe or yes even Canada that play to their particular audiences and the signifigance of various "adventures" on their readers.
For example Canadians don't like sex, therefore I cancelled my subscription to Outside. Okay that, and the fact that writing simply isn't as good as it was a few years ago. I mainly bought Outside for the writing.
Yo would have enjoyed one of the panel discussions at last years Banff Festival. On the panel was Peter Miller expeditions editor of National Geographic, Helen Churilo from The Mountaineers Press, Mike Roberts editor with Outside and Ed Douglas - Their topic was "Is adventure dead?" The concensus seemed to be that they were all tired of seeing the same story over and over again - the "walked into the woods-turned right-looked up-looked down' sort of txt that has been the staple of western adventure writing for well over three centuries. What they saw was a narrowing of that broad perspective towards a more personal and personality driven content flow.
I guess I would argue that this is a western phenomena, due in no small part to our comparitively larger leisure class and if this is true I wouldn't expect to see it reflected in the writings from other places.
Does this make it better or worse? No just different.
Interestingly it was Ed Douglas who had the harshest criticism for the genre and mentioned a story he had seen about a trip to Burma. It started out as a travelogue and descended into a soccer game that played out as morality skit referencing the problems faced by that country.
As for Alpinist, I love it and was even quoted in one of the early editions.
Dave - a bit harsh on Outside, they are a business after all and therefore have to attempt to pander to an audience that they know they can have. I can think of plenty of other magazines, whether they are in Asia, Europe or yes even Canada that play to their particular audiences and the signifigance of various "adventures" on their readers.
For example Canadians don't like sex, therefore I cancelled my subscription to Outside. Okay that, and the fact that writing simply isn't as good as it was a few years ago. I mainly bought Outside for the writing.
Yo would have enjoyed one of the panel discussions at last years Banff Festival. On the panel was Peter Miller expeditions editor of National Geographic, Helen Churilo from The Mountaineers Press, Mike Roberts editor with Outside and Ed Douglas - Their topic was "Is adventure dead?" The concensus seemed to be that they were all tired of seeing the same story over and over again - the "walked into the woods-turned right-looked up-looked down' sort of txt that has been the staple of western adventure writing for well over three centuries. What they saw was a narrowing of that broad perspective towards a more personal and personality driven content flow.
I guess I would argue that this is a western phenomena, due in no small part to our comparitively larger leisure class and if this is true I wouldn't expect to see it reflected in the writings from other places.
Does this make it better or worse? No just different.
Interestingly it was Ed Douglas who had the harshest criticism for the genre and mentioned a story he had seen about a trip to Burma. It started out as a travelogue and descended into a soccer game that played out as morality skit referencing the problems faced by that country.
As for Alpinist, I love it and was even quoted in one of the early editions.
