Not to beat the dead horse into the ground, but, as you know, I went to England over the summer. When asked why I chose to go to London (because the trip location was my choice), I usually named one of or all of the following reasons:
- Foreign editions of books that also were readable (because I read only English).
- No language barrier (although I had rather underconsidered the barrier of accents).
- Harry Potter
One of which is literary tourism in and of itself. But as we were in England, I found that, voluntarily or involuntarily, I was being a literary tourist beyond buying foreign editions (actually only one foreign edition, which I will come back to later) and visiting the aforementioned dead horse, the Harry Potter studios, which I will stop talking about now.
We went to Stonehenge and the white chalk horses near Bath and visited the British Museum in London. However, I also visited an amazing and amazingly large bookstore in Canterbury, the site of Chauncer's Canterbury Tales (which features pilgrims telling tales to each other on their way to the Canterbury Cathedral).
And amazing sites aside (because they were amazing) I couldn't stop thinking that, canonically, Richard Campbell Gansey III (of The Raven Cycle fame) walked the circle around Stonehenge and saw the white horses and was probably making nerdy notes in a notebook about ley lines the entire time. I picked up a book about ley lines. In a non-Ganseylike way, I felt it was a Ganseylike thing to do (which you'll understand if you've read The Raven King; there's a passage about Gansey thinking that what most people think of as Ganseylike doesn't really get at his essence, just his outside. Ley lines are part of his outside).
Nota bene: I bought a British copy of The Raven Boys, since I don't own a copy and I felt that I'd been thinking about the books an unusual amount (I didn't get any HP editions because I love Mary GrandPré's covers and chapter illustrations, which aren't in the British editions). Reading it, I rediscovered how aggressively car-related it is. Why, you might ask? Because "tyre," "kerb," and "petrol," all aggressively car-related words and aggressively British words, are very prevalent. It's weird to hear characters with American Southern accents "say" "petrol," to my American brain, anyway.
I kept thinking about how Hermione-like I was being as I enthused about YA foreign editions in a Waterstone's. I thought about the Hogwarts Express as we took the train from London.
Literary tourism is about seeing where authors wrote, where filmmakers recreated, and where characters walked, both in-text and out. I'm all for walking the same ground as famous people, but to walk the same ground as fictional people is pretty cool too.
Happy reading!
~Citali
P.S. Here's a John Green.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHfYj48mDCY
And amazing sites aside (because they were amazing) I couldn't stop thinking that, canonically, Richard Campbell Gansey III (of The Raven Cycle fame) walked the circle around Stonehenge and saw the white horses and was probably making nerdy notes in a notebook about ley lines the entire time. I picked up a book about ley lines. In a non-Ganseylike way, I felt it was a Ganseylike thing to do (which you'll understand if you've read The Raven King; there's a passage about Gansey thinking that what most people think of as Ganseylike doesn't really get at his essence, just his outside. Ley lines are part of his outside).
Nota bene: I bought a British copy of The Raven Boys, since I don't own a copy and I felt that I'd been thinking about the books an unusual amount (I didn't get any HP editions because I love Mary GrandPré's covers and chapter illustrations, which aren't in the British editions). Reading it, I rediscovered how aggressively car-related it is. Why, you might ask? Because "tyre," "kerb," and "petrol," all aggressively car-related words and aggressively British words, are very prevalent. It's weird to hear characters with American Southern accents "say" "petrol," to my American brain, anyway.
I kept thinking about how Hermione-like I was being as I enthused about YA foreign editions in a Waterstone's. I thought about the Hogwarts Express as we took the train from London.
Literary tourism is about seeing where authors wrote, where filmmakers recreated, and where characters walked, both in-text and out. I'm all for walking the same ground as famous people, but to walk the same ground as fictional people is pretty cool too.
Happy reading!
~Citali
P.S. Here's a John Green.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHfYj48mDCY
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