Travel Writing: ‘A Failed Defense Against Impermanence’?

Travel Blog  •  Eva Holland  •  07.12.10 | 10:05 AM ET

The New Inquiry’s Helena Fitzgerald dusts off Walter Benjamin’s essay on acquisition and collection, “Unpacking my Library,” and applies it to those of us who chronicle our travels. Here’s Fitzgerald:

Travel writing wants to defeat the impermanence of being in any one place. In keeping records of the intangible—people or places or experiences -we attempt to forget that the things we love are not, in fact, things, and therefore can’t be kept, preserved, or possessed… Location is necessarily fleeting. As with art and with beauty and even, finally, with people for whom we feel things, there is nothing to be done about it.

The post is worth reading in full. (Via @travelingpam)

Tags: Travel Philosophy, Travel Writing, News and Briefs

Eva Holland is co-editor of World Hum. She is a former associate editor at Up Here and Up Here Business magazines, and a contributor to Vela. She's based in Canada's Yukon territory.


1 Comment for Travel Writing: ‘A Failed Defense Against Impermanence’?

ed 07.13.10 | 12:31 AM ET

I think travel is like collecting because you are collecting memories and experiences each time. My 2 cents.

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