Greasey burgers, Bourbon, Faulkner, The Grove, Rebel Flag,Hwy 61....

Thompson did not mention the hot women. Must have not wanted to bog down story in cliches. He did allude to move evolved race relations but not near as evolved as the
rest of the country.

 

Besides friends?

A really good restaurant and music scene.

It has a charm that is vastly superior to the other SEC towns, largely because it is so tiny compared to some of the others, so it still has that small town feel and it is the kind of place a writer can run into the coach while they're both making a chicken fingers runs.

It is also one of the few places that still feels old school Southern in the South. Not the dirt farming hill country South, but the seventh generation, still living on the trust South that used to rule.

I guess it helps that my friends there are Lafayette County royalty and that it gives me a bit of a different perspective on the place.

 

I don't really want to make this into a big thing. But I think it's unfair to suggest he only writes about the South. He mixes it up plenty. This took five mins looking in the ESPN.com archives.


Argentina:

http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/11036214/while-world-watched-world-cup-brings-back-memories-argentina-dirty-war

Brazil:

http://www.espnfc.com/blog/wright-thompson/94/post/1947282/wright-thompson----the-rio-the-world-cup-didnt-show

China:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=bamboocurtain

Iraq:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=iraq/thompson

India:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=110329/cricket

Ghana:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=ghanasoccer

Florida:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=091216/jimmyrobinson

Bosnia:

http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/10921287/nothing-stay-buried-bosnia-herzegovina-forward-vedad-ibisevic-returns-homeland

Italy:

http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/9338962/when-beautiful-game-turns-ugly

Texas/Hati:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=Guerdwich-Montimere

Chicago:

http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/11694655/derrick-rose-new-player-new-man-ready-end-cycle-injuries

Uruguay:

http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/10984370/portrait-serial-winner-luis-suarez-soccer-most-beautiful-player

Scotland:

http://espn.go.com/golf/theopen/story/_/id/9485385/searching-meaning-scotland

Germany:

http://xgames.espn.go.com/events/2013/munich/article/9423991/x-games-munich-present-converge-site-1972-olympic-tragedy

State College, PA:

http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/7271034/penn-state-scorched-scandal-struggles-define-its-icon-joe-paterno

 

Man. Nice work if you can get it.

 

He gets dogged on here a lot, but he is one of the best writers out there and a rare one who can handle all that. That's why he gets the work. He didn't just fall into it.

 

As I said he is a travel writer.
I am not surprised when I see Anthony Bourdain drinking expensive wine in Crete.

 

Maybe I missed it, but no one said he's not one of the best writers out there. I don't know how that could even be debated.

 

I take comments like Circus' to mean the guy had been gifted such a job instead of working his way into one. But I think threads like these are by themselves an implicit tear-down of the subject.

I don't know. Maybe it's just me.

 

Agreed. It's the genre that's become a tad cliched. Not the writer. You can find the same stuff over and over from Rick Bragg, Willie Morris, and with a Texas twist Dan Jenkins.

 

Not disputing that. A lot of his work is about trying to capture a "place" for readers, especially if it's one they're unlikely to ever see. Just saying the idea that he only writes about "the South" as was contended by RecoveringJournalist, among others, in this thread doesn't really hold up to facts.

 

I'd like to see him write something about the incident that led to him quitting Twitter. He can handle criticisms of his work -- you've got to at that level or you won't last long -- but the tweet about his dad was a sucker punch to the balls.