Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 159Ð187, 1999 Þ 1998 Elsevier S

Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 159Ð187, 1999 Þ 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved \ Pergamon Printed in Great Britain 0160-7383/98 $19.00+0.00 PII: S0160-7383(98)00076-0 WRITING OUT THE TOURIST IN SPACE AND TIME Graham Dann University of Luton, UK Abstract: This paper examines the ways in which travel writing manages the distinction between traveler and tourist. In exploring this complex literary genre, the study also tries to account for its continued popularity as a promotional medium. By writing out the tourist via the universal categories of space and time, writers can appeal to the anti-tourist who resides in every tourist. The metaphor of a journey to the timeless periphery may also strike a chord in many a reader since it speaks of life itself as a form of travel. By way of illustration, typical works of three contemporary, Anglophone travel writers are selected and compared. Keywords: travel writing, literary genre, tourist versus traveler, space and time, periphery. Þ 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Re sume : Pour effacer le touriste dans l|espace et le temps. Cet article examine comment la litte rature de voyage traite la distinction entre voyageur et touriste. En examinant ce genre litte raire complexe, l|e tude a pour but d|expliquer sa popularite  continue comme ve hiclule de promotion. En effac žant le touriste a  travers les cate gories universelles de l|espace et du temps, les e crivains arrivent a  plaire a  l|anti-touriste qui vit dans chaque touriste. La me taphore d|un voyage a  une pe riphe rie intemporelle peut toucher la corde sensible pour maint lecteur, puisqu|elle parle de la vie me ¼me comme une sorte de voyage. On compare les exemples, qui sont tire s de trois e crivains anglophones contemporains typiques de la litte rature de voyage. Mots-cle s: litte rature de voyage, genre litte raire, touriste par opposition a  voyageur, espace et temps, pe riphe rie. Þ 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. INTRODUCTION The distinction between traveler and tourist has become a recurring theme in the academic literature and a subject of spirited electronic discussion among tourism experts. This enduring topic has sparked off a lengthy debate about authenticity (Cohen 1979, 1988, 1995; MacCannell 1989; Moscardo and Pearce 1986) over whether some or all tourists seek contrived or genuine experiences. It has helped frame some analogies about tourism, envisaged, for example, as a sacred journey (Graburn 1989), or as a form of play (Lett 1983; Moore 1980). The distinction has raised several questions about the nature of the touristic quest and its relationship to destination people*the pre- sumed object of that quest (Crick 1994; van den Berghe 1994). Indeed, the familiar dichotomy has even posed issues of identity for researchers as they either emphasize similarities (Crick 1985, 1995) Graham Dann is a founder member of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism and of the Research Committee on International Tourism of the International Sociological Association. After lecturing in sociology for 21 years at the University of the West Indies, Barbados, in 1996 he took up his current position as Professor of Tourism at the University of Luton (Department of Tourism and Leisure, Luton, Bedfordshire LU1 3JU, UK. Email ðgraham.dann@luton.ac.ukŁ). 159 160 TOURISTS IN SPACE AND TIME or differences (Bruner 1995; Errington and Gewertz 1989) between themselves and those whom they try to investigate. Within these various scholarly discourses, reference is sometimes made to the phenomenon of tourist angst (Fussell 1979a, 1980; Mac- Cannell 1989), that feeling which many tourists are reckoned to display towards fellow vacationers whenever they come into contact with, and seek to distance themselves from, them (Jacobsen 1996, 1997a). However, so far very little attention has been paid to the sources of tourist angst, or to the tensions they conceal and reveal. True, there have been studies of the messages targeted at potential customers by such various marketing media as videos and brochures (Hanefors and Larsson 1993; Selwyn 1993), but generally these other- wise commendable analyses assume, rather than view as problematic, that tourists will fit neatly into the role to which they have been assigned by the industry. One important, though often neglected, vehicle of tourist soc- ialization is the medium of travel writing, since it is this form of communication which, perhaps more than any other, adopts a critical stance to the overall phenomenon it is treating (Dann 1996). Yet, strangely, to the best of one|s knowledge, there have been no com- prehensive inquiries as to how travel writers deal with the auto- biographical conflict that exists within them between the roles of traveler and tourist. Moreover, there is apparently no investigation that systematically explores the paradox that the richer the portrayal of {{undiscovered|| places of travel, the more likely it is that they will become transformed into {{discovered|| tourist destinations. Recognizing such a gap in tourism research, this paper highlights excerpts from the work of three contemporary travel writers. In par- ticular, it focuses on the inner feelings they experience and com- municate, along with the questions of self-identity they rhetorically pose in their descriptions of far flung places, sentiments which have the cumulative effect of physically and psychologically distancing themselves and their readers from the more familiar voyager of today: the tourist. In their accounts, these authors seek to preserve their enjoyment of the periphery by banishing tourists from it or, in terms of television soap opera, by {{writing out|| the tourist, in much the same way as characters who have overstayed their welcome, become a nuisance, gone off to have a baby, become implicated in a scandal or have died, are eliminated from the series. Such an expulsion of tourists from the remote Garden of Eden is nothing new. After all, they have been figures of fun since their designation was invented and applied. What is perhaps more novel is the ironic appreciation that the more tourists are outlawed from the exotic regions of the earth, the greater is their desire to penetrate these forbidden domains of paradise. Travel writers are aware of this dilemma. That is why, however unwilling they may be as mediators of tourism, they have to get there first and relish the uninvaded space while they can. At the same time, they have to heighten expectation in their audience back home. It is really a similar situation to enhancing the titillation of an erotic film by announcing that it has been {{Banned in Copenhagen||. Just what is travel writing and why does it still persist today are two 161 GRAHAM DANN additional considerations related to the previously identified issues. They are also addressed in the following discussion of this under- studied literary genre (Cocker 1992:5). Alternatively stated, why do books, such as Michael Palin|s (1997) Full Circle or Bill Bryson|s (1997) A Walk in the Woods feature prominently among national best sellers week after week, and why do bookstores continue to devote consider- able space to these and similarly popular titles, while scholarly explan- ations for their appeal are so correspondingly scarce and conspicuously absent? One possible answer to this ongoing dilemma is that, in the post-tourist world of virtual reality (Urry 1990), the travel book, in targeting the armchair aficionado (Hall and Kinnaird 1994:192), obviates the necessity for journeying to a destination, particularly since the descriptions it offers are often better, and certainly a good deal safer, than reality itself. Yet, however persuasive this suggestion, its main flaw surely lies in the realization that, far from replacing travel with vicarious experi- ence (thereby presumably triggering a decline in international arrivals and departures), all the recent statistical evidence (in spite of the recurring setbacks of currency turmoil), points to healthy increases in worldwide tourism (World Tourism Organization 1998). Further- more, and coterminously, travel accounts have been found to be as much a significant source for holiday decision taking today (Clough 1997; Dann 1989), as ever they were in the past (Jacobsen 1997b; Seaton 1999). For this reason alone, the travel book must be con- sidered an effective promotional device (Dann 1996). Indeed, that travel writing can and does convert description into action is clear from Hall and Kinnaird|s (1994:192) reference to Rose Macaulay|s (1949) Fabled Shore: From the Pyrenees to Portugal. They maintain that her work was at least partly responsible for setting the agenda of the tourist experi- ence. They also agree with Robinson that it led to the invasion of the Iberian coastline, thereby rendering it {{one of the most successful or most disastrous travel books ever published|| (1990:95). Even so, such a counter-argument does not satisfactorily explain how a textual genre of much greater lineage, one that emphasizes phrase, still manages to compete successfully with such predominantly visual postmodern media as television and the Internet that focus upon gaze. A brief response is that the travel book|s continued success resides in its complex appeal to the anti-tourist, the person who is said to exist in every tourist. Moreover, its constant stress and reformulation uploads/Litterature/ writing-out-the-tourist-in-space-and-time-pdf.pdf

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