TRAVELOGUES
In this thread, contributors take us on literary, musical, photographic and essayistic journeys of the mind and around the world. Much like travelling itself, these travelogues come in the form of prolonged journeys, single outings and remarkable experiences and events.
June 2017
DETROIT: The Composite City by Andrew Lees. Lees visits the North American town in search of Motown, Henry Ford, Diego Rivera, lawnmowers and urban gardeners to delve deeper into the post-industrial city’s history.
May 2017
AN OBSCURE AND UNUSUAL WINDOW ONTO A CITY: Jason Donald’s Dalila by Lynnda Wardle. In this piece – part travelogue, part interview, part review – Wardle goes on a dérive through Glasgow neighbourhoods Govan, Ibrox and Cessnock with to talk about his second novel, Dalila, which centres on the asylum process in Britain, with Cessnock’s UK Visa&Immigration centre at its heart.
July 2015
SCALES/PATTERNS by Tom White. In the photo essay, travelogue and soundscape Scales/Patterns Tom White, editor of the Ecocriticism Now thread, visits Iceland for the New Chaucer Society Congress and remembers the contributions and topics covered in the thread so far.
November 2014
EAST OF EAST KILBRIDE: MY JOURNEY BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN – A PHOTO ESSAY by Fiona Rintoul. In 1986, Fiona Rintoul travelled from her home in East Kilbride to the Karl Marx University Leipzig (KMU) to study German for a term. This trip behind the Iron Curtain led to a lifelong fascination with Eastern Europe and the former German Democratic Republic. Rintoul’s first novel, The Leipzig Affair, is set in the bleakly beautiful world of 1980s’ East Germany. It tells the story of a doomed love affair between Robert, a young Scot studying at KMU in 1985, and Magda, an East German woman desperate to flee. Here, Rintoul takes us on a photo journey through the East Germany she knew, highlighting some of the places that inspired her novel.
July 2014
ORFORD NESS PENINSULA: A PHOTO ESSAY by Graham Riach. The Orford Ness peninsula is a shingle spit that juts out of the Suffolk Coast. Now a National Trust nature reserve, it was once controlled by the Ministry of Defence and used as a secret testing site for military hardware. Wooden buildings remain from the trials of early radar and otherworldly concrete pagodas for testing bomb triggers stud the horizon, their roofs designed to collapse in case of accident. This photo essay is part of our ongoing Ecocriticism Now thread.
Since March 2014
ARGENTINE TRAVELOGUE by Rebecca DeWald. In 2014, editor Rebecca DeWald travelled to Argentina and took books of and about Argentine literature with her, a literature which is receiving more and more attention in English at the moment. In this thread she offers travel accounts about books, Argentina and translation, and makes a few excursions into post-travel literature.
March 2015
CARLOS GAMERRO, BARILOCHE AND ITS “SCHIZOPHRENIC MOOD” – by Rebecca DeWald. A travelogue on Gamerro’s three novels in English to-date, An Open Secret (Pushkin Press, 2011), The Islands (And Other Stories, 2012), and The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Perón (And Other Stories, 2015), all translated by Ian Barnett, and on the hidden and obvious history of the northern Patagonian town of San Carlos de Bariloche.
June 2014
ARGENTINA’S CRÓNICAS: Rodolfo Walsh’s Operation Massacre and Patricio Pron’s My Fathers’ Ghost is Climbing in the Rain – by Rebecca DeWald. Translated by Daniella Gitlin and Mara Faye Lethem, respectively. This piece discusses the complicated relationship between Argentina and politics, its portrayal in fiction and non-fiction or semi-fiction, and the mysteries of Córdoba.
April 2014
FATE, COINCIDENCE, LIFE ITSELF – by Rebecca DeWald. An interview with Beth Fowler on her translations of Iosi Havilio’s novels, translation and Argentina, and a few questions arising from a day by the pool in Santa Catalina, Province of Córdoba.
March 2014
FINDING BORGES – by Rebecca DeWald. The first piece of a thread of travel accounts about Argentina, literature and translation discusses the godfather of modern Argentine literature and his resistance to being remembered.