Tourism, Mass Culture and Literature: Two Travel Books by Terenci Moix Published in the 1970s

Abstract

This article analyses two travel books by Terenci Moix (pseudonym of Ramon Moix): Terenci del Nil (1970) and Terenci als U.S.A. (1974). The two books, written once the writer had made each trip, demonstrate the impact of tourism, mass culture and social movements on the imaginary representations of Egypt and the United States, as well as topics like homosexuality and colonialism. These will all be explored, while taking into account Moix’s adoption of a language influenced by the cultural and semiotic studies of the 1960s, which focus on phenomena such as kitsch and new forms of visual communication.

Key Words:

• Semiotics
• Cultural Studies
• Contemporary History
• Travel Literature
• Tourism Studies
• Terenci Moix
• Egypt
• United States
• Colonialism

Notes

1 Terenci Moix, Terenci del Nil. Viatge sentimental a Egipte seguit de Terra dels faraons, prefaci de Maria Aurèlia Capmany (Barcelona: Editorial Selecta, 1970), 89. The book, rewritten by Moix himself and extended, was published in Spanish in 1983 (Terenci del Nilo. Viaje sentimental a Egipto [Barcelona: Plaza & Janés]). Further references are to the original Catalan edition and will be given parenthetically in the main text.

2 J. M. Castellet, Seductors, il·lustrats i visionaris: sis personatges en temps adversos (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 2009), 242.

3 See Mercè Picornell Belenguer, Continuïtats i desviacions: debats crítics sobre la cultura catalana en el vèrtex 1960/1970 (Palma: Lleonard Muntaner, 2013), 59–62; Carles Santacana, ‘Els llargs anys seixanta a Catalunya o els debats d’una cultura en (re)construcció’, in Quan tot semblava possible … : els fonaments del canvi cultural a Espanya (1960–1975), coord. Carles Santacana i Torres (València: Publicacions Univ. de València, 2018), 42–45.

4 Josep-Anton Fernàndez, Another Country: Sexuality and National Identity in Catalan Gay Fiction, ed. Catherine Davies (London: MHRA, 2000), 42.

5 Sasha D. Pack, Tourism and Dictatorship: Europe’s Peaceful Invasion of Franco’s Spain (New York/Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

6 Fernàndez, Another Country, 74.

7 Some of the names referenced in the book are Yul Brynner and Anne Baxter (the main actors in the film The Ten Commandments [Cecil B. DeMille, 1956]). These references formed part of the cultural basis of Moix's Egyptian imagery even before his trip to that country.

8 See Castellet, Seductors, il·lustrats i visionaris, 203–20; alternatively, see Juan Bonilla, El tiempo es un sueño pop: vida y obra de Terenci Moix (Barcelona: RBA, 2012), 301–08.

9 This social phenomenon, which forms part of the cultural theory of the 1960s will be dealt with in more depth in my discussion of Terenci als U.S.A. below.

10 Maria Aurèlia Capmany, ‘En Ramon de Barcelona i en Terenci del Nil: història d’una metamorfosi’, in Moix, Terenci del Nil, 9–14.

11 Tim Youngs, The Cambridge Introduction to Travel Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2013), 78.

12 Regarding the cultural programme developed by Catalanism during the 1960s, see Jordi Amat, El llarg procés: cultura i política a la Catalunya contemporània (1937–2014) (Barcelona: Tusquets, 2015), 239–327; Picornell Belenguer, Continuïtats i desviacions; and the essays compiled in Quan tot semblava possible … , coord. Santacana i Torres.

13 Both publishing houses were significant cultural platforms for the diffusion of Catalan culture in 1960s. According to Moix (Terenci del Nil, 19–22), Joan Oliver (the editorial director of Proa) commissioned him to deal with Six-Day War and its connections with the history of the Jewish community and the creation of the state of Israel (which had been addressed by writers such as Salvador Espriu and Josep Pla). Moix refused the commission because the Egypt he admired was the one built by mass media, and ‘el seu mal gust habitual’ (Terenci del Nil, 20). At Editorial Selecta Moix had the freedom to publish the type of book he wanted.

14 See Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class, with a foreword by Lucy R. Lippard & an epilogue by Dean MacCannell (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1989 [1^st ed. 1976]), 11.

15 See Jonathan Culler, ‘The Semiotics of Tourism’, American Journal of Semiotics, 1:1–2 (1981), 127–40.

16 The distinction between ‘tourist’ and ‘traveller’ has been analysed in depth in Paul Fussell, Abroad: British Literary Travelling Between the Wars (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1980).

17 Caren Kaplan, Questions of Travel: Postmodern Discourses of Displacement (London/Durham, NC: Duke U. P., 1996), 61.

18 MacCannell, The Tourist, 14.

19 See Joan Teixidor, Viatge a Orient (Barcelona: Tàber, 1969).

20 James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. P., 1997, 1–13), 3.

21 The only place without tourists is Saquara: ‘hi manca més de la meitat dels guies, malleres i venedors de postals que van acorralant el viatger’ (Terenci del Nil, 100).

22 Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London/New York: Routledge, 2003 [1^st ed. 1992]), 3.

23 See Patrick Holland & Graham Huggan, Tourists with Typewriters: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Travel Writing (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 2000), ix.

24 Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Crónica sentimental de España (Barcelona: Debolsillo, 2003 [1^st ed. Espasa-Calpe, 1971]).

25 See Isabel García-Montón García-Baquero, Viaje a la modernidad: la visión de los Estados Unidos en la España finisecular (Madrid: Editorial Verbum, 2002); David Miranda-Barreiro, Spanish New York Narratives 1898–1936: Modernization, Otherness and Nation (Leeds/London: Legenda, 2014); and Joan de Déu Domènech, Mirant enfora: cent anys de llibres de viatges en català (Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1995).

26 See Dionisio Cañas, El poeta y la ciudad: Nueva York y los escritores hispanos (Madrid: Cátedra, 1994). See also Julio Neira, Historia poética de Nueva York en la España contemporánea (Madrid: Cátedra, 2012), and his Geometría y angustia: poetas españoles en Nueva York (Sevilla: La Fundación José Manuel Lara, 2012).

27 See Rafael Alarcón Sierra, Una rana viajera: las crónicas y libros de viaje de Julio Camba (Sevilla: Renacimiento, 2010), and his ‘Llámalo sueño: Nueva York en la narrativa española’, Ínsula, 821 (2015), 11–16.

28 See Antonio Niño, La Americanización de España (Madrid: Los Libros de la Catarata, 2012).

29 See Maria Dasca Batalla, ‘El imaginario de Estados Unidos en dos libros de viajes de Julián Marías y Josep Pla de los años cincuenta’, BHS, XCVI:8 (2019), 835–50.

30 See Picornell Belenguer, Continuïtats i desviacions, 93.

31 See Martin Luther King. El crit de la consciència, trad. Ramon Terenci Moix, amb un pròleg de Josep M. Ainaud de Lasarte (Barcelona: Edicions Proa, 1968).

32 Terenci Moix, Terenci als U.S.A., pròleg de Borja Bagunyà (Barcelona: L’Avenç, 2019 [1^st ed. Barcelona: Edicions Proa, 1974]), 19. Further references are to this edition and will be given parenthetically in the main text.

33 Manuel Vázquez Montalbán jokes about the ‘brotes de antiamericanismo’ of his generation when he suggests that this hostility comes from the milk powder and chewing gum sent over to Spain by the American army (‘Cuando Di Stéfano y Kubala llenaban los estadios’, in his Crónica sentimental de España, 114–22).

34 See Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1962).

35 The term ‘midcult’ was introduced by Dwight MacDonald in the 1962 essay ‘Masscult and Midcult’. See Masscult and Midcult: Essays Against the American Grain, ed. John Summers, with an intro. by Louis Menand (New York: New York Review of Books, 2011). Moix utilizes this term in his work.

36 Umberto Eco, Apocalípticos e integrados, trad. Andrés Boglar (Barcelona: Lumen, 1990 [1^st Italian ed. 1964]), 84.

37 Umberto Eco, ‘Nuestro monstruo cotidiano’, in his Diario mínimo, trad. Jesús López Pacheco (Barcelona: Península, 1973 [1^st Italian ed. 1963]), 213–227.

38 The book was translated and published in Spanish in 1978: Robert Venturi, Steven Izenour & Denise Scott Brown, Aprendiendo de Las Vegas: el simbolismo olvidado de la forma arquitectónica, trad. Justo G. Beramendi (Barcelona: Editorial Gustavo Gili, 1978).

39 Venturi, Izenour & Scott Brown, Aprendiendo de Las Vegas, trad. Beramendi, 23.

40 Gillo Dorfles, Nuevos ritos, nuevos mitos, trad. Alejandro Saderman (Barcelona: Lumen, 1969 [1^st Italian ed. 1965], 293).

41 Eco, Apocalípticos e integrados, trad. Boglar, 84.

42 Dorfles, Nuevos ritos, nuevos mitos, trad. Saderman, 188–89.

43 Eco, Apocalípticos e integrados, trad. Boglar, 101.

44 Culler, ‘The Semiotics of Tourism’.

45 See Susan Sontag, ‘Notes on “Camp” ’, in her Against Interpretation (London: Andre Deutsch, 1967 [1^st ed. Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1966]), 274–92.

46 Borja Bagunyà, ‘Pròleg’, in Moix, Terenci als U.S.A. 9–17 (p. 12).

47 Michael Cronin, Across the Lines: Travel, Language, Translation (Cork: Cork U. P., 2000), 84.

48 Dorfles, Nuevos ritos, nuevos mitos, trad. Saderman, 19.

49 Dorfles, Nuevos ritos, nuevos mitos, trad. Saderman, 292.

50 Manfred Beller, ‘Perception, Image, Imagology’, in Imagology: The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters. A Critical Survey, ed. Manfred Beller & Joep Leerssen (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2007), 1–16 (pp. 11–12).

51 Culler, ‘The Semiotics of Tourism’.

52 Culler, ‘The Semiotics of Tourism’.

53 Jean Baudrillard, La Société de Consommation (Paris: Gallimard, 1986 [1^st ed. 1970]).

54 See Kaplan, Questions of Travel, 58.

55 Ingrid Guardiola, L’ull i la navalla: un assaig sobre el món com a interfície (Barcelona: Arcàdia, 2018), 108.

* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.