Somewhere in my room I have a notebook with all my beginning of the semester scribblings. Things from orientation. Things from first meetings. Things from almost any gathering we had during that first week. I'm not sure why I bothered to write them down. Was I trying to translate graduate school into something easily contained in a marbled composition notebook? Did I think I could put it into instruction manual rhetoric? The method behind my madness is unclear (as per usual). Maybe I just needed something to do with my hands. Anyway, there's a list in there - acquired during a first meeting of a reading group - of Early Modern journals. Ones to read. Ones in which to be published. "You can feel smug while you're sitting on an airplane reading these," we were told. "At the very least you'll feel smarter than the people reading Harry Potter."
Interesting. So people do in fact notice stuff. Particularly, they notice other people wandering around in shared spaces. I suppose that should make me a little more self-conscious about sitting in 24F with US weekly or Cosmo or the latest in the Jackie Collins canon*.
We're not talking about airplane culture in class, but we are talking about travelers. What if we view travel literature not as literature written about travel, but rather the literature consumed during travel? We would no longer be talking about national, cultural or scientific development. Instead, we would be dealing with personal development. Marilyn Monroe once said (ok fine, it was in a movie) "it's a terrible thing to be lonesome, especially in the middle of a crowd." I think it's true that we feel alone when we're in huge crowds, but it's a false sense of security. The fact of the matter is that other people are looking around; they see us. Impressions are made. That's the whole point of people-watching. So what do the books we read (particularly the ones we read in public, when traveling) say about us?
This is particularly interesting in our class time period(s). Trevor has been collecting yellowbacks from the 19th Century - the books people bought before boarding the train. It's filled with advertisements, and the stories are easy to read. They're made for consumers, not critics. And they were made during an age of some incredible canonical works. So why were these books so popular? And what does that say about British culture? (The books were published in London.) What were people looking for in a book? An escape? An adventure?
Also, I'd like to do some research into train technology and (maybe) commuter culture.
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*Please note, I don't actually read Jackie Collins. But she did have some impressive hair, back in the day.
4 comments:
Fabulous! I love the idea of inverting the notion of "travel writing" into reading we do in a state of "motion"- reading we do on the journey of our life. I quite honestly hide my books when I read in public. At home or in the office I read in various positions, most often with the front cover of my work carelessly exposed. Abroad, however, I fold the cover back to hide the title, or set the book firmly on my lap or the table top before me. I do not like to show the world what occupies the inner most space of my mind as I read, mostly because I read for myself, and go within myself to read. I find it irritating when people inquire after what I'm reading, like they should know that right then I'm in an intimate moment with another's words, and not to be disturbed. And yet, interestingly I have very seldom read in public without being disturbed into some social interaction. If one cannot see my title, I am often asked about what "holds (my) interest so intensely" or "what's that?" or am I "reading for school or pleasure" (as if the two are wildly separate...which to be honest at times they very much are). What am I getting at though? I suppose I notice above all else that reading in public- as much as reading is often an "isolated" task- brings people together. It's as if a book or article is an invitation to socialize with a stranger, without the awkwardness of first (and most often last) encounters with new people.
In the end, what I want to say to you is I love this idea and I can't wait to see where it brings you on your academic (and indeed personal) journey.
H.
Toria,
I'm glad you decided to follow-up on this topic. Whenever you use primary sources from archives, you already have a corner on the "originality" component of a seminar paper or journal article. It would be fascinating to do some work on beginnings of train travel and show how it dovetails with travel reading, as James Watt and the steam engine (which would give you your "scientific" element, ie, applied science) were as prominent in this period as were "yellowback" novels. The research and insights of this topic would have implications for not only Austen's era, but also Dickens, etc., in the later nineteenth century. Steam ahead...
You might find Leah Price's The Anthology and the Rise of the Novel useful as a theoretical framework for the culture of reading into which you could plug in your own work on the yellowbacks and such.
Contributed data: On my flight to Europe, I read Matthew Pearl's 'The Dante Club.' Mysteries are sufficiently engaging that they hold my attention in the confusion of airports and the discomfort of flights. It was also marginally relevant since I was going to Florence and wanted to think about Dante. On the return flight, I read Mary McCarthy's 'Stones of Florence.' Again, easy to read and I had just seen much of what she discussed so I was easily engaged.
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