Column | The Mightier Pen: Escape, Belonging, and Revival through Literary Tourism

Everyone enjoys a stimulating getaway. And everyone loves a serendipitous story. The combination of the two creates a version of magical realism that is ideal for visitors who enjoy integrating their imagination with a reality that is little known to them.

The place that inspired the locale, whether a standalone attraction or a component of a larger setting, highlights local culture. When travellers visit places associated with an author's life or literary universe, they are reminded of their own experiences, which makes them want to stay longer and immerse themselves in the alternate reality. Destination marketing heavily harnesses people's penchant for fantasy.

The Great Escape

Places have inspired literature, while at the same time, literature has inspired travel and helped establish a sense of 'place' in people. The craving for a specific ‘chronotope’, or the configurations of a place in space and time depicted in literary works, drives the desire to travel. Tourists are more interested in living an experience; the distinction between reality and fiction is inconsequential to most.

In contrast to physical, objective, or perceived space, conceived space is the representation of space that people have in their minds that is unrestricted in their imagination. The perceived and conceived spaces merge to create one's lived space, or "espace vecu" (Henri Lefebvre). Tourists enjoy having countless opportunities to design their own espace vecu, and immerse themselves in a literary universe that captivates their curiosity and fascination. And for a short while, they become characters in their favourite work of literature.

Every place is a palimpsest of the interactions of the generations that have lived in and visited it. The tourist on an itinerary, and even more so the flaneur, seeks out landmarks and unique situations described in their favourite works of fiction, blurring the distinction between fiction and reality and enriching their espace vecu.

Experiential or immersion travel also helps people elevate their thinking from ethnocentrism to ethnorelativism. Through acceptance, adaptation, and integration, they progressively shift from using the standards of their own culture as a frame of reference to judge other cultures rather than the standards of the specific culture involved, to demonstrating greater tolerance of foreign cultures.

Whether the urge to travel stems from a need to hone one’s intercultural competency or to escape life’s monotony, even if for a little while, immersion travel has positive psychological benefits.

Yearning for belonging

Aymanam, a village in Kerala, rose from obscurity in the 1990s after serving as the setting for a Booker Prize-winning drama novel. Although the novel is about the dysfunctional and tumultuous relationships of a fictional family, literary tourists flock to this sleepy village to savour the calming serenity and witness real social cohesion in a rural fishing and farming community.

Tourists seeking to escape urban chaos and cacophony find solace at the sight of canals, canoes, and coconut palms. The village, which appears to be frozen in time, appeals to the sensibilities of the sensitive tourist and the indifferent tourist alike. Nearly 25 years after achieving literary fame, Condé Nast International, a global media company, listed Aymanam as one of the top 30 places to visit in the world in 2022.

Culture: commodified, repurposed, or revived?

In contrast to the uninitiated tourist, a literary tourist is more likely to be familiar with a place, increasing their potential to make their tour more meaningful.

Immersion travel focuses on experiencing a place by meaningfully engaging with its heritage and culture, its people, and its environment. However, when a destination becomes an extensively curated display of ideologies and identities, the commodification of culture runs the risk of replacing authenticity with a mere illusion.

Critics argue that in the effort to display a place's character as depicted in the literary universe, tourism can impair the natural evolution of a place. The local culture is commodified when a place is forced to fit within a literary chronotope or a clichéd landscape created by fiction.

Conversely, proponents contend that the need for preservation from tourists can actually prevent local cultural dilution. When cultural elements are repurposed and acquire new meanings, they may be better equipped to serve the demands of tourists and even allow the emergence of new cultural characteristics as a result of interactions between visitors and locals. As a result of such an incentive, the local population may be driven to develop more cultural self-awareness. Through commerce, cross-cultural interaction enriched civilizations, and this holds true even today.

For nature, cultural, and literary appreciation

Our cultural history represents our collective identity and serves as the foundation for our future. Fictional tourism is a promising tool for nature and cultural preservation that can save a ‘place’ from the negative impacts of globalisation as well as local negligence. By connecting popular culture and places, literary tourism can inspire the local population to dive deeper into their heritage and preserve it, as well as showcase it to a global audience. It can support a nation's broader cultural renaissance, which is profitable for both the tourism sector and local communities. It can raise visitor understanding and enthusiasm for conservation initiatives by showcasing the place that inspired the locale. An additional benefit is the realistic possibility that popular tourist attractions might inspire and prompt visitors to immerse themselves in reading.

Literary tourism can aid in the preservation of natural and cultural heritage. The challenge is deciding where to draw the line between preserving a place for mindless consumerism and preserving local nature and culture out of real appreciation and a desire to preserve them—the foundation of sustainable tourism.

(Ann Rochyne Thomas is a bio-climatic spatial planner and founder of the Centre for Climate Resilience - a sustainability and climate change advisory.)