on Notes who, when we were discussing a recent piece of his, suggested the idea that a fictional story often captures the essence of a place better than a travel guide ever can - a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with. So, my question for you this week is:
Has a piece of fiction ever inspired you to visit a place, and where was it?
P.S. If you’d ever like to suggest a question for these discussion threads, feel free to harass me on Notes!
Your question is quite timely as I am leaving in September to visit Nova Scotia, because of a poem I read in eighth grade called Evangeline, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I read that poem in 1963, so it’s taken me 60 years to take the journey.
That’s such a great story! Hope it lives up to 60 years worth of imagination. Would love to hear how you found it - are you planning on writing about it after your trip?
I’m not sure what you’re asking regarding how I found it. I read the poem in school and became fascinated by Nova Scotia and the expulsion of the Acadians in the mid-1700’s. It took Evangeline her lifetime to find her fiancé when they were separated during the Expulsions.
There are a million good responses to this...but I have to be weird/honest and say I've always wanted to visit the hotel that inspired Stephen King's The Shining.
My daughter was married in 3/20/20 when the pandemic shut everything down. However, she and my son-in-law still decided to go ahead with their stay at the Pierre Hotel in NYC.
They were literally the only guests and they swear they heard music coming from another room. As horror fans, they were pretty freaked out.
That’s why scary stories are so universally popular. Before moving pictures there were tales of horror such as the brothers Grimm. Even over a century later those stories are known to children.
Not sure I’d want to find myself in the Shinings story Hotel and the book scared me so much I was afraid to see the movie but found it no where near as scary as the story. His books were a staple in my teens but had to stop because I felt they were driving me to paranoia.
Agatha Christie was another strong influence to my youth. My whole family devoured her books.
Robert Ludlum’s books made me want to visit the Mediterranean.
The Thorn Birds made me not ever want to visit Australia.
Yes!! I think the only reason I find it thrilling is because I've selected to be afraid. Do you know what I mean? It's not a real life scare - those I would not volunteer for.
All the Japanese authors that I’ve read have made me feel as if I know the country, although I’ve never been there. Of course I want to, but after all these years of reading about and watching stuff made in Japan, will it live up to the hype? Probably not.
Those are my two...having read of and about each greatly before visiting (and living in Paris). I think also good literature makes me experience a place on some kind of extra level even if it didn't spark me to travel there.
I had an American friend come to visit me in London. When discussing what attractions she wanted to visit, she said she would pass on the Tower of London (a hugely important historical site) because "I've seen the video"!
😂😂 love it. I wouldn’t turn anything down in Japan though, no matter how many times I’ve seen the sights in anime or read about them. I’m just worried they won’t live up to the images I’ve built in my head.
The opposite always happen for me: when I'm traveling, I read almost exclusively books that feature the place I am traveling to. When I was teaching creative writing one summer in England I picked up Nan Shepard's THE LIVING MOUNTAIN to read on a week away in Scotland. And when I was traveling through Moab this summer, I listened again to DESERT SOLITAIRE and a woman's address to it, Amy Irvine's DESERT CABAL.
You've read it! I engulfed it. We were staying on the green river when I was at the scene with her dad and the guy with a gun and even though that happened like forty years ago I was SPOOKED. And she gets at the aspects of the other book that I felt but hadn't named. All the people that were around in Abbey's life, for instance.
I agree, I love to read books about the area I am visiting. Reading Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese by Patrick Lee Fermor during our visit to Greece, gave the holiday an extra special aura. On the other hand, I quickly tired of my husband reading from The History of the Peloponnesian War.
Nan Shepard's books about the Cairngorms are also very atmospheric. I hope you enjoyed your visit - it is where I come from.
I certainly visited Howth Head (north of Dublin Bay) courtesy of the Molly section of "Ulysses," but then again there's no way to walk through Dublin without an emotional or mental debt to that novel, after you've read it.
It is essential reading, though the city is much less formidable than the novel (at least, it was the last time I was there). But if Dublin is too much, any of the towns along the bay are worth visiting by a short train ride.
Nice! The Martello tower is much smaller in person, though the replica panther inside is a good joke. I made the mistake of asking the volunteer behind the counter about Joyce, and he talked through me for 20 minutes straight.
Also, for anyone this deep down the labyrinth who don't care much for Joyce, the Dublin Writer's Museum has a great arrangement of the writers who have made the city's literary name great (including Joyce but also those who came before and since).
I never have, and honestly I never plan to. Part of what I admire about "Ulysses" is its absolute irreducibility: you cannot paraphrase, summarize, nor analyze it fully, the way it drinks in all possible bits of consciousness. Thus, "unfilm-able" seems a polite word for it, especially since watching the film would mean several hours of unfair comparison to the book.
Have you watched it? And if so, am I being too harsh?
Yes! Two things come to mind. One is kind of the reverse. While studying for the summer in Paris during grad school, I read Balzac's "Lost Illusions" (in English, alas). So cool to walk around the city and see the places in the book. The second - that same summer, I read "The Leopard," saw the film (in Italian, dubbed in French ~!), and the next day, booked a flight to Sicily (where my bf, now husband was working on an archeological study of the Greek city of Morgantina). Oh, to be young a mobile again!
It's a fine city, pretty interesting. It's far better, crime wise, than it was in 90s.
Absolutely no tourist go, but tons of Mexican-americans cross both ways daily, since it has three pedestrian bridges with El Paso and both cities are really one big city. Which makes it my kinda town.
Virgil's Aneid made me want to visit Rome. And while not a work of fiction, Machiavelli's "Il Principe" made me very fascinated by Florence. I am drawn to anyplace with a lot of history attached.
Me too. Wherever I go, discovering the history is one of my favorite aspects.
I think studying art history gave me some of the most valuable insights into the ancient world, architecture and cultural evolution. Some aspects still influence architectural design today.
For a few years I lived on the Oregon coast, at least partially because of the way that Ursula Le Guin had described it, and how it had inspired the worlds that she created. Not a single regret.
That book gets a terrible rap (and probably fairly so) but it does do an excellent job of getting you excited about Paris. Same with Angels and Demons and Rome
My obsession with New Orleans begins and ends with Anne Rice, specifically The Witching Hour trilogy. As a young adult, these novels gripped me like only fantasy can. You can say what you want about the literary quality of these novels, but there is no questioning her love for New Orleans - it's written into every sentence, every house description, every mention of architecture and culture in those stories.
A lot of my place obsessions began with children or YA novels. Think it’s something about that age, yearning for the freedom to go anywhere you want, that turns them into lifelong obsessions
Oh, yes! Last year I visited Naples, Italy, after having read 3 of the 4 volumes of Elena Ferrante's 'Neapolitan Quartet'. Needless to say I went there carrying volume no. 4 and started reading it in various cafés of the city. 😍
I LOVE this question. Like many people my age, I read Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird in school. Nelle Harper Lee grew up in Monroeville, Alabama, and is the basis for her fictional town of Maycomb in her novel. Monroeville is where she met her childhood friend and lifelong writing colleague Truman Capote. My dad and I wanted to visit Monroeville, but the pandemic delayed our plans. We finally went in April 2022 and got to see an outdoor performance of the stage version, which moved inside the courthouse for the trial scene. It's the actual courthouse used in the movie and where Nelle used to watch her lawyer father defend his clients. The building has quite a history and they've made a great museum of it with several rooms dedicated to Capote. It was a delightful trip.
I'm sure I have many other answers to this same question. I guess one answer that wouldn't count but is related is that I grew up in the town that inspired Altamont, Catawba, in Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel (Asheville, NC), the residents of which were none to happy with Wolfe after his book was published.
I went to Asheville before reading "Look Homeward, Angel" and haven't been able to mentally reconcile the two since meeting them both. That said, they're still a beautiful town in an unmatched vista and one knock-em-down novel, respectively.
A lot of people in Asheville, then and now, wouldn't agree with your assessment of the novel... of course, it could be interpreted in different ways. 😄
Hahaha - which city truly appreciates its literary examination, right?
I guess I mean "knock-em-down novel" more literally, since Wolfe seems to use the place as the springboard for his own mythic ambition rather than reflecting the place itself.
it's not the first time when i'm mentioning here that some of my favourite books all starts with "once upon a time"; and in honour of one of them, i went to visit collodi in italy. enough to say that the place has the tallest wooden pinocchio in the world
Venice - after reading 'Don't Look Now' in Daphne du Maurier's short stories collection 'Not after Midnight'. Seeing Nicholas Roeg's film in 1973 just reinforced that desire. Venice during the day is one city but after dark .....
I think after the success of the film, the short story collection was renamed 'Don't Look Now and other stories.' It is not the usual pretty, pretty view of Venice but the city 'after dark'. When I feel the city takes on a more interesting guise. Another good read of Venice in that way is Ian McEwan's 'The Comfort of Strangers' - he never mentions the city by name but it's definitely set there. Although not strictly fiction, reading Hemingway's posthumous 'Moveable Feast' as a teenager around 1970 gave me a desire to visit Paris and experience cafe culture. I've been lucky enough to do that many times now, including celebrating my wife's 40th there and then my youngest daughter's 16th.
Interestingly the genre that does this for me the most is historical fiction, maybe because they really rely on the experiential truth of a place to help them access the ghosts + histories they’re trying to pin down?
I read a ton of Lost Generation works, but once I read The Paris Wife by Paula McLain I felt I absolutely had to be wandering around Paris at night, in the South of France at high summer, and in the stands for a bull fight. It’s on my list of aspirational trips
Looking at a photograph I just posted in Notes- me sailing a dhow off of Lamu, Kenya circa 1983, I have to say that Isak Dinesen's (Karen Blixen) Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass inspired that year of overland adventures that stared in London and ended on Lamu Island. "I had a farm in Africa..."
Somehow I never got round to reading that book but I did live in the Karen suburb of Nairobi for a few months. I think Kenya might be my favourite African country of all that I’ve visited so far. Part of me would love to start an African farm
Funny, I never did get to Karen's house in Kenya, but have visited her Danish home and now museum twice where she actually wrote all those beautifully crafted tales.
My husband was a classics teacher, and during a holiday to Greece he was determined to visit the gates of Hell. Ovid wrote of how Orpheus traveled to the Greek underworld by entering a cave at Cape Tenaron, on the southern tip of the Peloponnese. We searched for a long time, coming to the conclusion that the small indentation in a scrubby bit of land, with its pathetic pile of rocks, were the ancient gates to Hell. It was very disappointing!
Way less highbrow than other answers but my partner's childhood obsession with The Mysterious Cities of Gold led to him studying ancient history and spending some years in Mexico.
Heart of Darkness (Conrad) and A Bend in the River (V.S. Naipaul) lead me to the Congo. But I’ve also had the process work in reverse. After my years in Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Zambia, I discovered Alexandra Fuller and read her Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Scribbling the Cat, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness, and Leaving Before the Rains.
Another time, many years after we lived in Botswana, I was departing for some regrettable place somewhere when by chance I passed a bookstore on my way to security and happened to see a book with a Tswana design gracing a rondavel, so I purchased my first No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency volume of Alexander McCall Smith’s wonderful series. Later, I started adding the Audible editions read by Lisette Lacat who does a masterful job of properly pronouncing place names and Setswana words, except for one road name. The series is such a lovely portrayal of life in Africa that western reporters never seem to experience.
All of which reminds me of a small exchange at the Yakima Farmers’ Market this morning when I stopped at the booth of a woman whose accent I immediately recognized as one from somewhere in west Africa, so I asked her where she grew up, which I now understand is considered racist, an epithet that I no longer give a damn about because I am talking to people I’ve shared most of my life with and care deeply about.
She said she was from Mali, and I replied that I had visited her country and had also spent a good deal of time just across the border in Siguire, Guinea-Conakry, where she also spent time as a market woman selling goods unavailable in Guinea. We talked for maybe ten minutes and she finally said, “then you know we aren’t animals or helpless children in need of white Jesus in Africa, as most Americans think.” I smiled and said yes, I do know these things very well. We both smiled and I thanked her for coming to America to help make this a better country.
Your question is quite timely as I am leaving in September to visit Nova Scotia, because of a poem I read in eighth grade called Evangeline, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I read that poem in 1963, so it’s taken me 60 years to take the journey.
That’s such a great story! Hope it lives up to 60 years worth of imagination. Would love to hear how you found it - are you planning on writing about it after your trip?
I’m not sure what you’re asking regarding how I found it. I read the poem in school and became fascinated by Nova Scotia and the expulsion of the Acadians in the mid-1700’s. It took Evangeline her lifetime to find her fiancé when they were separated during the Expulsions.
Sorry - my poorly phrased sentence is to blame here. What I meant was, I would love to hear how you find Nova Scotia after you visit!
I’m very new to Substack, but I would love to try and put my findings and feelings to paper at my journey’s end. Thanks!
I hope you have a marvelous time. My husband and his buddy drove motorcycles up there for his friends 60th bday. Someday I’d like to see it myself.
Not going on a motorcycle though.
There are a million good responses to this...but I have to be weird/honest and say I've always wanted to visit the hotel that inspired Stephen King's The Shining.
I would love to as well. Maybe the BTMU’s first ever in person retreat can be up there 😂
Perfect place for a writer's retreat.........
I started to practice my first sentence:
All work and no play........
Genius idea!!!
Here's an Overlook type of scene:
My daughter was married in 3/20/20 when the pandemic shut everything down. However, she and my son-in-law still decided to go ahead with their stay at the Pierre Hotel in NYC.
They were literally the only guests and they swear they heard music coming from another room. As horror fans, they were pretty freaked out.
Jeeze that’s both the perfect experience for the setting but also terrifying 😂😂
I'd be terrified but also love it. There's something thrilling about being afraid.
That’s why scary stories are so universally popular. Before moving pictures there were tales of horror such as the brothers Grimm. Even over a century later those stories are known to children.
Not sure I’d want to find myself in the Shinings story Hotel and the book scared me so much I was afraid to see the movie but found it no where near as scary as the story. His books were a staple in my teens but had to stop because I felt they were driving me to paranoia.
Agatha Christie was another strong influence to my youth. My whole family devoured her books.
Robert Ludlum’s books made me want to visit the Mediterranean.
The Thorn Birds made me not ever want to visit Australia.
Yes!! I think the only reason I find it thrilling is because I've selected to be afraid. Do you know what I mean? It's not a real life scare - those I would not volunteer for.
Ahhh the Thorn Birds...and Barbara Stanwyck
Oooooh yes!
It is as creepy as you would imagine, especially the way that it is situated as you go in and out of Estes Park.
Ahhh one day I will get myself there!
in winter???? chuckle
All the Japanese authors that I’ve read have made me feel as if I know the country, although I’ve never been there. Of course I want to, but after all these years of reading about and watching stuff made in Japan, will it live up to the hype? Probably not.
Andrei you have captured the exact question that I’m in the grips of agonising over in an essay for Cosmographia! This is how I feel about Paris
I think neither of you will be disappointed :)
But my advice is to do mostly non-touristy stuff!
Those are my two...having read of and about each greatly before visiting (and living in Paris). I think also good literature makes me experience a place on some kind of extra level even if it didn't spark me to travel there.
Can’t wait to read it!
I had an American friend come to visit me in London. When discussing what attractions she wanted to visit, she said she would pass on the Tower of London (a hugely important historical site) because "I've seen the video"!
😂😂 love it. I wouldn’t turn anything down in Japan though, no matter how many times I’ve seen the sights in anime or read about them. I’m just worried they won’t live up to the images I’ve built in my head.
I would love to see the Japanese gardens.
Same, and also the onsen (the thermal baths), especially those in the mountains. Ahh, a dream.
The opposite always happen for me: when I'm traveling, I read almost exclusively books that feature the place I am traveling to. When I was teaching creative writing one summer in England I picked up Nan Shepard's THE LIVING MOUNTAIN to read on a week away in Scotland. And when I was traveling through Moab this summer, I listened again to DESERT SOLITAIRE and a woman's address to it, Amy Irvine's DESERT CABAL.
This is my life too. I basically always feel I have to be reading something about where I’m travelling in case it’s useful for Cosmographia!
Desert Cabal is WONDERFUL!!
You've read it! I engulfed it. We were staying on the green river when I was at the scene with her dad and the guy with a gun and even though that happened like forty years ago I was SPOOKED. And she gets at the aspects of the other book that I felt but hadn't named. All the people that were around in Abbey's life, for instance.
WOAH! I had the great good fortune of studying writing w/ Amy. She is a fierce teacher. Love her perspective.
I agree, I love to read books about the area I am visiting. Reading Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese by Patrick Lee Fermor during our visit to Greece, gave the holiday an extra special aura. On the other hand, I quickly tired of my husband reading from The History of the Peloponnesian War.
Nan Shepard's books about the Cairngorms are also very atmospheric. I hope you enjoyed your visit - it is where I come from.
I certainly visited Howth Head (north of Dublin Bay) courtesy of the Molly section of "Ulysses," but then again there's no way to walk through Dublin without an emotional or mental debt to that novel, after you've read it.
Might have to finally read my copy when I visit next year
Would highly recommend starting with Dubliners and then A Portrait of the Artist.
It is essential reading, though the city is much less formidable than the novel (at least, it was the last time I was there). But if Dublin is too much, any of the towns along the bay are worth visiting by a short train ride.
Same here -- Joyce and Dublin. Visited for the 100th anniversary of both the novel and Ireland itself last year.
Oh, if only. How was the celebration there?
Unfortunately was not there for Bloomsday. But got to see pretty much all the Joycean sites, from the Martello tower to Leopold Bloom's front door.
Nice! The Martello tower is much smaller in person, though the replica panther inside is a good joke. I made the mistake of asking the volunteer behind the counter about Joyce, and he talked through me for 20 minutes straight.
Also, for anyone this deep down the labyrinth who don't care much for Joyce, the Dublin Writer's Museum has a great arrangement of the writers who have made the city's literary name great (including Joyce but also those who came before and since).
Have you ever seen the sixties Ulysses movie? If so, what did you think?
I never have, and honestly I never plan to. Part of what I admire about "Ulysses" is its absolute irreducibility: you cannot paraphrase, summarize, nor analyze it fully, the way it drinks in all possible bits of consciousness. Thus, "unfilm-able" seems a polite word for it, especially since watching the film would mean several hours of unfair comparison to the book.
Have you watched it? And if so, am I being too harsh?
Yes! Two things come to mind. One is kind of the reverse. While studying for the summer in Paris during grad school, I read Balzac's "Lost Illusions" (in English, alas). So cool to walk around the city and see the places in the book. The second - that same summer, I read "The Leopard," saw the film (in Italian, dubbed in French ~!), and the next day, booked a flight to Sicily (where my bf, now husband was working on an archeological study of the Greek city of Morgantina). Oh, to be young a mobile again!
The Leopard is one of my top 5 books ever. In fact it would be on my list of books that made me actually. Love that book. Particularly the end
100% The movie's pretty great, too - although someday I'd like to see it in English. 😂
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa is the most wonderful book. And the film is the only one I have seen that accurately reflects the book.
One of my faves too
I might be the only person who went to Juarez Mexico (and El Paso) inspired by Roberto Bolanos 2666.
Does Juarez deserve its reputation or is it unfairly maligned do you think?
It's a fine city, pretty interesting. It's far better, crime wise, than it was in 90s.
Absolutely no tourist go, but tons of Mexican-americans cross both ways daily, since it has three pedestrian bridges with El Paso and both cities are really one big city. Which makes it my kinda town.
Virgil's Aneid made me want to visit Rome. And while not a work of fiction, Machiavelli's "Il Principe" made me very fascinated by Florence. I am drawn to anyplace with a lot of history attached.
Visited both of these earlier this year and actually reread bits of both of the books you mention here!
Sweet!
Me too. Wherever I go, discovering the history is one of my favorite aspects.
I think studying art history gave me some of the most valuable insights into the ancient world, architecture and cultural evolution. Some aspects still influence architectural design today.
For a few years I lived on the Oregon coast, at least partially because of the way that Ursula Le Guin had described it, and how it had inspired the worlds that she created. Not a single regret.
I totally visited the Paris of The Da Vinci Code! So fun....
That book gets a terrible rap (and probably fairly so) but it does do an excellent job of getting you excited about Paris. Same with Angels and Demons and Rome
Why does it get a terrible rap? I loved it haha!
Yes, I did the same with The Da Vinci Code. I believe they even had specific tours for the locations in the book, when it was hot.
Can you visit all the sites? What a fun idea to make a trail of sites mentioned in a great book.
Yes! I loved how a lot of his research was based on real landmarks and theories!
My obsession with New Orleans begins and ends with Anne Rice, specifically The Witching Hour trilogy. As a young adult, these novels gripped me like only fantasy can. You can say what you want about the literary quality of these novels, but there is no questioning her love for New Orleans - it's written into every sentence, every house description, every mention of architecture and culture in those stories.
A lot of my place obsessions began with children or YA novels. Think it’s something about that age, yearning for the freedom to go anywhere you want, that turns them into lifelong obsessions
Oh, yes! Last year I visited Naples, Italy, after having read 3 of the 4 volumes of Elena Ferrante's 'Neapolitan Quartet'. Needless to say I went there carrying volume no. 4 and started reading it in various cafés of the city. 😍
I’ve not heard of those, will have to check them as am intending to go to Naples at some point!
Brilliant writing, in my view. Literary fiction mixed with a full blown fascinating picture of life in Naples from the 50s throughout the 90s. 🙂
Loved those books!
Oh yes, I had such fun immersing myself in that world! The series was also surprisingly well done.
I LOVE this question. Like many people my age, I read Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird in school. Nelle Harper Lee grew up in Monroeville, Alabama, and is the basis for her fictional town of Maycomb in her novel. Monroeville is where she met her childhood friend and lifelong writing colleague Truman Capote. My dad and I wanted to visit Monroeville, but the pandemic delayed our plans. We finally went in April 2022 and got to see an outdoor performance of the stage version, which moved inside the courthouse for the trial scene. It's the actual courthouse used in the movie and where Nelle used to watch her lawyer father defend his clients. The building has quite a history and they've made a great museum of it with several rooms dedicated to Capote. It was a delightful trip.
I'm sure I have many other answers to this same question. I guess one answer that wouldn't count but is related is that I grew up in the town that inspired Altamont, Catawba, in Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel (Asheville, NC), the residents of which were none to happy with Wolfe after his book was published.
I went to Asheville before reading "Look Homeward, Angel" and haven't been able to mentally reconcile the two since meeting them both. That said, they're still a beautiful town in an unmatched vista and one knock-em-down novel, respectively.
A lot of people in Asheville, then and now, wouldn't agree with your assessment of the novel... of course, it could be interpreted in different ways. 😄
Hahaha - which city truly appreciates its literary examination, right?
I guess I mean "knock-em-down novel" more literally, since Wolfe seems to use the place as the springboard for his own mythic ambition rather than reflecting the place itself.
it's not the first time when i'm mentioning here that some of my favourite books all starts with "once upon a time"; and in honour of one of them, i went to visit collodi in italy. enough to say that the place has the tallest wooden pinocchio in the world
Venice - after reading 'Don't Look Now' in Daphne du Maurier's short stories collection 'Not after Midnight'. Seeing Nicholas Roeg's film in 1973 just reinforced that desire. Venice during the day is one city but after dark .....
Hoping to visit in Feb so will put this on my reading list
I think after the success of the film, the short story collection was renamed 'Don't Look Now and other stories.' It is not the usual pretty, pretty view of Venice but the city 'after dark'. When I feel the city takes on a more interesting guise. Another good read of Venice in that way is Ian McEwan's 'The Comfort of Strangers' - he never mentions the city by name but it's definitely set there. Although not strictly fiction, reading Hemingway's posthumous 'Moveable Feast' as a teenager around 1970 gave me a desire to visit Paris and experience cafe culture. I've been lucky enough to do that many times now, including celebrating my wife's 40th there and then my youngest daughter's 16th.
For Venice read Miss Garnet’s Angel by Salley Vickers
Thanks for the rec
Oh absolutely! More than Instagram ever could.
Interestingly the genre that does this for me the most is historical fiction, maybe because they really rely on the experiential truth of a place to help them access the ghosts + histories they’re trying to pin down?
I read a ton of Lost Generation works, but once I read The Paris Wife by Paula McLain I felt I absolutely had to be wandering around Paris at night, in the South of France at high summer, and in the stands for a bull fight. It’s on my list of aspirational trips
Looking at a photograph I just posted in Notes- me sailing a dhow off of Lamu, Kenya circa 1983, I have to say that Isak Dinesen's (Karen Blixen) Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass inspired that year of overland adventures that stared in London and ended on Lamu Island. "I had a farm in Africa..."
Somehow I never got round to reading that book but I did live in the Karen suburb of Nairobi for a few months. I think Kenya might be my favourite African country of all that I’ve visited so far. Part of me would love to start an African farm
Funny, I never did get to Karen's house in Kenya, but have visited her Danish home and now museum twice where she actually wrote all those beautifully crafted tales.
My husband was a classics teacher, and during a holiday to Greece he was determined to visit the gates of Hell. Ovid wrote of how Orpheus traveled to the Greek underworld by entering a cave at Cape Tenaron, on the southern tip of the Peloponnese. We searched for a long time, coming to the conclusion that the small indentation in a scrubby bit of land, with its pathetic pile of rocks, were the ancient gates to Hell. It was very disappointing!
Well let’s hope your judgement of his doorway hasn’t offended Hades or you might be forced to return one day!
Oh my goodness!!
Way less highbrow than other answers but my partner's childhood obsession with The Mysterious Cities of Gold led to him studying ancient history and spending some years in Mexico.
I think kid’s books often have this effect more than the high brow adult ones!
I love that children's books inspire people towards a career.
I’m heading to London, York and Scotland in a few weeks. Literary inspirations definitely played a part but too many to name.
Have fun!
Heart of Darkness (Conrad) and A Bend in the River (V.S. Naipaul) lead me to the Congo. But I’ve also had the process work in reverse. After my years in Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Zambia, I discovered Alexandra Fuller and read her Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Scribbling the Cat, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness, and Leaving Before the Rains.
Another time, many years after we lived in Botswana, I was departing for some regrettable place somewhere when by chance I passed a bookstore on my way to security and happened to see a book with a Tswana design gracing a rondavel, so I purchased my first No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency volume of Alexander McCall Smith’s wonderful series. Later, I started adding the Audible editions read by Lisette Lacat who does a masterful job of properly pronouncing place names and Setswana words, except for one road name. The series is such a lovely portrayal of life in Africa that western reporters never seem to experience.
All of which reminds me of a small exchange at the Yakima Farmers’ Market this morning when I stopped at the booth of a woman whose accent I immediately recognized as one from somewhere in west Africa, so I asked her where she grew up, which I now understand is considered racist, an epithet that I no longer give a damn about because I am talking to people I’ve shared most of my life with and care deeply about.
She said she was from Mali, and I replied that I had visited her country and had also spent a good deal of time just across the border in Siguire, Guinea-Conakry, where she also spent time as a market woman selling goods unavailable in Guinea. We talked for maybe ten minutes and she finally said, “then you know we aren’t animals or helpless children in need of white Jesus in Africa, as most Americans think.” I smiled and said yes, I do know these things very well. We both smiled and I thanked her for coming to America to help make this a better country.
Ah love that line at the end. Flipping the narrative. Sounds like a very sweet interaction