Travel Writers Online

A Case Study on Nantes This paper proposes new practices in place-making for writers of narrative non-fiction and for destination organisations that commission content authors.  Full-text now available on Toureme Substack at  https://open.substack.com/pub/toureme/p/literary-geographies-for-regenerative-073?r=21sgn4&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true   Place Graslin, Nantes. Photo: C. Mansfield 14:38 Thurs 6 April 2017 Making a Literary Geography Rather than undertake literary criticism on the works that present the branded destination, in this case study Nantes, a process of seeking out the potential catalysts for toureme moments (Mansfield 2015) offers the researcher a more economical and focussed approach to finding locations that have narrative value for the travel writer and blogger. [...]  _______________________________________________________________ <a rel="me" href="https://mastodon.world/@charlesmansfield">Mastodon...

Supporting the claim that readers build up a list of must-see places that their favourite authors frequented is this discovery in Rossi’s Le Voyageuse immortelle (2001, 10-11): Rossi remembers some friends of his saying they absolutely must see the place of the former Broussais Hospital on the corner of rue Curie in the old Doulon quartier of Nantes because it is the place where they believed, in 1916, André Breton worked as a medical intern.  André Breton met there Geneviève Mallarmé-Bonniot (1864-1919) as well as Jacques Vaché (1895-1919).   Vaché was a great inspiration to Breton; sadly, he died in a hotel room in Nantes on 6 th January 1919, from an overdose of opium.     The unpublished journal, or diary, of Mme Geneviève Mallarmé-Bonniot consists of 204 handwritten sheets running from Sunday 5th July 1914 to Tuesday 8 December 1917.  The part about Nantes starts at leaf or page 47. The journal was held by Mme Jacqueline Paysant in the 1990s. ...

Social Media researches across YouTube and through following WordPress blogs has yielded an exciting new detective fiction writer who both lives in Nantes and has set at least two of his novels in the city.  The main character in the stories is Capitaine de police Isabelle Mayet who moves to Nantes in Forge’s 2014 novel, La Trace du Silure .   In his next work, Un Parfum de soufre (2015) Capitaine Isabelle Mayet again investigates in the city.  In a YouTube video, filmed here in Nantes, Sylvain talks about how the intrigue takes place in the Jules Verne Museum. I am ordering my copies of these and look forward to writing more on Forge’s work for my travel writing research project on Nantes. Jules Verne was born in Nantes Jules Verne was born in Nantes on 8 February 1828. It is nearly the 200th anniversary of the writer’s birth. The house is marked with a bronze plaque, which I found during my stay at the Maison of Researchers. The address of the birthplace is 4 Ru...

Some types of research you simply cannot quantify, such as a chance text message to a friend in Brussels about my search for novels set in Nantes.  The results: he sent me a link to the WordPress site of the Novelists of Nantes or in French, Les Romanciers Nantais .  From over 120 books by about 30 contemporary authors from in and around Nantes my first selection is this set of three.  Only deciding by the publicity on their web-site, my first selection are novels that use named streets or places that can be found in Nantes today, or at least say they are set in contemporary Nantes.   The Novelists of Nantes Via their WordPress Comments box I am attempting to make contact with the novelists to see if any would like to tell me about the places they use in their narratives. In my doctoral research I identify key moments in the detective novel, The Yellow Dog , when Maigret, the character, is in the exact same spot that Simenon, the author, would have known (Mansfie...

Airport transfers Airport transfers are a perfect example of tourism knowledge transfer at its most practical level. I use the example of ferry departure points in one of my lectures as a mystery unknown to the holiday visitor. The airport transfer mystery has just surfaced for our group of 15 as we plan our fieldtrip to Nantes.  How do you move 15 people, with luggage, from L’Aéroport Nantes Atlantique, Bouguenais (NTE) into the city centre of Nantes, within walking distance of, say, rue la Fayette or rue Descartes?  If you have never been before, then it is very difficult, perhaps impossible to find that important piece of knowledge.  UK travel company staff do not speak French so they cannot find the answer for their customers.  Besides, who are they going to call? Google Maps tells us it is 12 kilometres and takes 19 minutes by car, but we do not have a car, we’ve flown in.  Ah, you say, click on public transport in Google Maps, but Google says: ‘Sorry, we...

I am just finishing reading Rossi’s Régine ; the story did drift into an autobiography with no real plot. From a literary tourism point of view the streets in the district to the east of the city centre of Nantes might hold a fascination for followers of Rossi’s writing or for the diaspora of those who grew up during the twentieth century in the city.  I plan to start his later book before the fieldtrip to Nantes. 

A busy week this week, I am still reading Paul Louis Rossi's 1990 book, Régine , which is more like an autobiography of Rossi living through the 1930s and 40s, at least, so far.  I suspect that the character, Régine, will start to take on a more prominent role.   Rossi gives us lots of street names and, as readers told me last week, the district to the east of Nantes city centre which still exists today, the quartier de Doulon. And even a mention of Plymouth! But this morning La Voyageuse immortelle arrived.   Rossi's later collection, which was published in 2001 by the French publishers, Le temps qu'il fait in Bazas. 

Finding novels set in Nantes is proving much more difficult than I thought.  C S Forester's Hornblower barely touches the ground in the city of Nantes. I need a narrative where the French urban space is almost a character itself.  This morning, though, with Google and Amazon, I found these two novels by Paul Louis Rossi (b.1933 Nantes): Régine (1990) and a later one, La voyageuse immortelle (2001) and they are now on order.  It is hard to judge whether they will create that elusive toureme for Nantes.  As my readers on Audible will know, I've been addicted to Patrick Modiano since 2015, and these two novels by Rossi do have a faint hint that they might have a similar quest for a missing character that Modiano's stories often recount. 

Our field trip to Nantes is all set, again; this time with a group of undergraduates who are studying on one of the many modules in French language studies.  Crossing the Channel in January was perhaps rather ambitious of me, so this journey is set for 4 th May 2016.  We travel to Southampton by train from Plymouth on the Tuesday, staying overnight in the Premier Inn on the airport and then fly FlyBe direct to NTE on Wednesday.  Bénédicte and Xavier at Le Voyage à Nantes have been very patient after my first research visit was postponed, and they have stepped in to help us to find venues and attractions for our students of French.  For example, they have found this wine bar to host our WSET training afternoon (Wine & Spirit Education Trust): La Comédie des Vins.  I am looking forward to reporting back from there on this blog: Travel Writers Online Our French lesson for this post is taken from our lunchtime series of teaching quality talks at the univer...

Agnès Varda In my preparation for the travel writing research work in Nantes I am by this stage, allowing myself to read, talk about, and watch anything and everything on the city.  My most recent discovery, after viewing Agnès Varda's 1991 film on director Jacques Demy, called Jacquot de Nantes , is that Demy directed his first New-Wave feature using Nantes as the setting.  The film, Lola , was released in 1961 and is an urban story of everyday life restored to gorgeous glossy black and white by Varda herself.  I wish I could show you some stills from the film; I asked UniFrance, for an image but to no avail.  I still hope you are inspired to see the film.   Passage Pommeraye  At least two scenes unfold in the covered arcade called the Passage Pommeraye; they are key moments in the drama, too.   And, my favourite shot is on the steps of what must be the Graslin Theatre, which fills the whole screen with geology and architecture with our two pro...

 Place Branding starts with inquiry  Reading the conference paper of António Azevedo (Azevedo 2009) I realise from his methods that I need to ask people who live in Nantes, why they love or hate their city.  This is technically, the first step in a Place Branding exercise.  Place Branding starts with an inquiry into what the city already represents for its inhabitants.  I need to discover, 'What is Nantes?'  Only, then can I begin to unpick the components of what has value.  But how do I determine what has value for a respondent to my research question? André Breton declares in his surrealist novel, Nadja (1928), that Nantes is (quoted in Garrett 2010, 193) 'perhaps, with Paris, the only town in France where I had the impression that something worthwhile could happen to me.'  Martin Garrett explains that André Breton was sent to Nantes in July 1915, to work as a medical auxiliary at 2 rue du Bocage (Garrett 2010, 193); that is almost exactly 100 ...