Letter to Ms. Gellhorn

Dear Ms. Gellhorn,

I am a college student, and my class and I just finished reading your memoir, Travels with Myself and Another.  It was really interesting to learn about your life and the people you met.  I find it funny that such a prominent and established journalist such as yourself would have a poor memory.  I guess that I have always assumed that journalists remember in great detail all of the places they have been to and the things they have written about, but it is normal to forget details as time continues.

In your book you describe several trips that you take, describing them as “horror journeys”.  Do you have a favorite horror journey?  In our class we have discussed that sometimes the trips that go awfully, entirely awry can create fun memories, but you still seem to describe your horror journeys in a negative light.  Do you think you will remember these trips more fondly later in your life?  Or will your negative recollections of these continue forever?

Though you state that you “never thought of writing about travel,” you wrote this book.  Were you happy with the way that it turned out?  I always feel as if I am forgetting something when I tell a story.  I’m sure that read over your memoir and edited it many times, but do you ever wish you had included something that you did not?  Or is there something you wish you had not included?  As someone who is often very critical of myself, I wonder how authors perceive their own memoirs, especially those that they originally never thought they would write.

Thank you for sharing your experiences in this memoir and thank you for all of the great journalism works that you did.

Best,

Selby Sturzenegger