DAVID BARRIE
Wednesday, 25th August 2010. On the diffusion of literary artifacts.
This summer I found myself in a (very well run) campsite in Buena Vista, Colorado (the Snowy Peaks RV Park for anyone who might find themselves passing through there – which, if you’re a hiker, you should try to do some day). The quintessential American question being “where you from?” (I’m never quite sure how to reply – should I say I’m from Glasgow, and then try to explain away my Paris address on the check-in form, or should I say Paris, and then account for my entirely inappropriate accent?), at reception there was a huge map of the world in which guests were invited to stick a little flag showing where they had commenced the trip which had eventually brought them to the foot of the Rockies.
One of the rather pointless but amusing things about the internet is that it makes it effortless to track the diffusion of a book – just Google its title and try to work out the geographical locations of where it pops up. Thanks to this, I know that Wasp-Waisted can be found on the shelves of a library in Auckland, New Zealand and that a copy of Night-Scented can be found in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Of course, in the looming digital age the diffusion of a text in a distant land will impress no one. In the meantime, however, I tend to look upon paper copies that undertake distant voyages as hardy adventurers. Thus, when backpacking around the place, I always take the time to investigate the paperbacks abandoned on a communal shelf in whatever refuge, bunkhouse or campsite I find myself in. You see some scary things (Ayn Rand seems to be in a fair number of rucksacks, for instance), but also some reassuring ones (I recall falling upon a copy of Emma on a coastal steamer in Chile which felt akin to bumping into an old friend). So while we’re still carrying paperbacks on holiday with us, I encourage everyone to abandon them in foreign lands so that they can provide solace to a future wanderer.
This summer I found myself in a (very well run) campsite in Buena Vista, Colorado (the Snowy Peaks RV Park for anyone who might find themselves passing through there – which, if you’re a hiker, you should try to do some day). The quintessential American question being “where you from?” (I’m never quite sure how to reply – should I say I’m from Glasgow, and then try to explain away my Paris address on the check-in form, or should I say Paris, and then account for my entirely inappropriate accent?), at reception there was a huge map of the world in which guests were invited to stick a little flag showing where they had commenced the trip which had eventually brought them to the foot of the Rockies.
One of the rather pointless but amusing things about the internet is that it makes it effortless to track the diffusion of a book – just Google its title and try to work out the geographical locations of where it pops up. Thanks to this, I know that Wasp-Waisted can be found on the shelves of a library in Auckland, New Zealand and that a copy of Night-Scented can be found in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Of course, in the looming digital age the diffusion of a text in a distant land will impress no one. In the meantime, however, I tend to look upon paper copies that undertake distant voyages as hardy adventurers. Thus, when backpacking around the place, I always take the time to investigate the paperbacks abandoned on a communal shelf in whatever refuge, bunkhouse or campsite I find myself in. You see some scary things (Ayn Rand seems to be in a fair number of rucksacks, for instance), but also some reassuring ones (I recall falling upon a copy of Emma on a coastal steamer in Chile which felt akin to bumping into an old friend). So while we’re still carrying paperbacks on holiday with us, I encourage everyone to abandon them in foreign lands so that they can provide solace to a future wanderer.