SOURCE: Rubin, Merle. “Travel Writing that Goes No Place.” Christian Science Monitor 81, no. 195 (1 September 1989): 13.

In the following review, Rubin is highly critical of Running in Place, describing the book as unoriginal, uninteresting, monotonous, and poorly organized.

Society hostess Elsa Maxwell is often credited with turning the South of France, specifically the Cote d'Azur, into a fashionable summer resort in the 1920s. (Before that, it was a place “resorted to” chiefly in the winter.) But Provence, the region of southeastern France that includes that stretch of coastline, has a long history of colorful associations: Roman Gaul, the Albigensian heresy, the medieval troubadours who virtually invented “romance.” A land of sunshine, olive trees, olive oil, garlic, honey, lavender, and perfume, Provence has held a special appeal for painters, who reveled in the clear brilliant light of the region.

The South of France must hold special associations for author Nicholas Delbanco...