Early on, Evelyn Waugh’s travel notes did double duty providing material for novels while also sourcing his journalism. For that reason, his travelogues often feel like afterthoughts.
For lauded travel writers like Paul Theroux or William Least Heat-Moon, the book is the focus. However brilliant at dishing and dunking as Waugh was, his road accounts often feel unformed by comparison.
In Remote People, the World of Waugh is an exciting, amusing, often cantankerous place to explore. Still, at the end of the day the only road that matters may as well be the one that takes you back home.