Journalism and travel writing: from grands reporters to global tourism

Abstract

Travel literature has a long-established historical connection with journalism that continues into the present. However, travel texts that are considered more ‘journalistic’ in nature are often classed as inferior to more ‘literary’ ones. Michel Le Bris, in his contributions to the Pour une littérature voyageuse manifesto, rejects ideological, committed literature, specifically distancing travel literature from journalism, and demonstrating instead a nostalgia for past forms and eras of travel, which is also typical of the wider movement with which he is associated. This movement has been criticised however, for its lack of engagement with the present, the social and the political, qualities that are often to be found in travel writing of a more ‘journalistic’ nature. Writers of such texts include Olivier Weber, who is involved in the movement, as well as Jean-Claude Guillebaud, who is not (although he was awarded their Astrolabe prize in 1993). Examining the work of these two writers this article suggests ways in which travel writing can benefit from its association with journalism, precisely by addressing the present, the political and the individual.

Keywords:

• journalism
• reportage
• genre
• Olivier Weber
• Jean-Claude Guillebaud

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the AHRC and The Queen's College, Oxford for providing the funding for this research.

Notes

Notes

1. Jean-Yves Le Disez, ‘Introduction’, in Seuils et Traverses: enjeux de l’écriture du voyage: Actes du colloque de Brest (6-8 juillet 2000), ed. Jean-Yves Le Disez and Jan Borm (Brest: Centre de Recherche Bretonne et Celtique, 2002), 7-12 (7), and Myriam Boucharenc, L’Écrivain-reporter au cœur des années trente (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2004), 12–13.

2. See, for example, Le Disez, ‘Introduction’, 7, Adrien Pasquali, Le Tour des horizons: critique et récits de voyage (Paris: Klincksieck, 1994), 31–9, and Boucharenc, L’Écrivain-reporter, 97–120.

3. Thomas Ferenczi, L'Invention du journalisme en France: naissance de la presse moderne à la fin du XIXe siècle (Paris: Plon, 1993; repr. Payot et Rivages, 1996), 24–6.

4. Ferenczi, L’Invention du journalisme, 21, and Christian Delporte, Histoire du journalisme et des journalistes en France: du XVIIe siècle à nos jours (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995), 16–17.

5. Thomas Ferenczi, Le Journalisme (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2005), 5.

6. Delporte, Histoire du journalisme, 52, and Boucharenc, L'Écrivain-reporter, 49–50.

7. For a discussion of the different terms and their uses see Charles Forsdick, Feroza Basu and Siobhán Shilton, New Approaches to Twentieth-Century Travel Literature in French: Genre, History, Theory (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2006), 16–21. For discussions of the issue of literariness in the French context see also Forsdick, Basu and Shilton, New Approaches, 13–16, as well as Gérard Cogez, Les Écrivains voyageurs au XX^e siècle (Paris: Seuil, 2004), 11–33, and Pasquali, Le Tour des horizons, 41–9.

8. Pasquali, Le Tour des horizons, 31. All translations are my own.

9. Boucharenc, L'Écrivain-reporter, 13.

10. For discussions of this aspect of travel literature see, for example, Odile Gannier, La Littérature de voyage (Paris: Ellipses, 2001), 45–59, and Christine Montalbetti, Le Voyage, le monde et la bibliothèque (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1997).

11. Ferenczi, L'Invention du journalisme, 13–14, 36–7.

12. Boucharenc, L'Écrivain-reporter, 19, Ferenczi, L'Invention du journalisme, 31, and Christian Delporte, Les Journalistes en France (1880–1950): naissance et construction d'une profession (Paris: Seuil, 1999), 68–70.

13. Boucharenc, L'Écrivain-reporter, 59.

14. Cogez, Les Écrivains voyageurs, 23.

15. Boucharenc, L'Écrivain-reporter, 57–8.

16. Delporte, Les Journalistes en France, 71.

17. Boucharenc, L'Écrivain-reporter, 10, 80, 116.

18. Pierre Albert, ‘Pratiques du journalisme et crise de la presse quotidienne’, in Histoire et médias: journalisme et journalistes français 1950–1990, ed. Marc Martin (Paris: Albin Michel, 1991), 31–42 (36–7), and Boucharenc, L’Écrivain-reporter, 53.

19. Martin, ed., Histoire et médias, 20–1.

20. Boucharenc, L'Écrivain-reporter, 52.

21. See, for example, http://www.grands-reporters.com (accessed November 5, 2007), and http://www.scam.fr/AlbertLondres/altxt01.html (accessed November 5, 2007).

22. Boucharenc, L'Écrivain-reporter, 24, 57–8.

23. Paris: Éditions Complexe, 1999 [1992].

24. Pour une littérature voyageuse, 11–12.

25. Pour une littérature voyageuse, 140.

26. Pour une littérature voyageuse, 121.

27. Pour une littérature voyageuse, 11, 120, 140.

28. Pour une littérature voyageuse, 13. They are recognised as journalists in the biographical notes at the end of the text, 217–20.

29. For a discussion of the ‘imperialist nostalgia’ of the movement, see Charles Forsdick, Travel in Twentieth-Century French and Francophone Cultures: The Persistence of Diversity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 161, and Forsdick, Basu and Shilton, New Approaches, 106–11.

30. Jean-Didier Urbain criticises the ‘tyranny’ of ‘agoraphilia’, particularly in Kenneth White's texts, because it excludes other kinds of travel. Jean-Didier Urbain, ‘Le Cogito du Voyageur: “Esprit Nomade” et “Esprit du Voyage”’, in Seuils et Traverses, 21–41 (28–30). See also Forsdick, Travel in Twentieth-Century French and Francophone Cultures, on the bibliographic selection in Pour une littérature voyageuse: ‘travel remains a Western practice, agoraphilic, implicitly masculine and explicitly solitary’ (161).

31. See also Forsdick, Travel in Twentieth-Century French and Francophone Cultures, 165.

32. Jean Chesneaux, L'Art du voyage: un regard (plutôt) politique sur l'autre et l'ailleurs (Paris: Bayard Éditions, 1999), 236. ‘Semelles de vent’ is a reference to Le Bris's L’Homme aux semelles de vent (Paris: Éditions Grasset, 1977).

33. Chesneaux, L'Art du voyage, 154.

34. Franck Michel, Désirs d'ailleurs: essai d'anthropologie des voyages (Paris: Armand Colin, 2000).

35. Michel, Désirs d'ailleurs, 196, 206.

36. Michel, Désirs d'ailleurs, 218, and in the third edition (Saint-Nicolas: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2004), 326. This French call for travel writing and travellers to engage with the political echoes the sentiments of critics outside France. See, for example: Patrick Holland and Graham Huggan, Tourists with Typewriters: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Travel Writing (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2000 [1998]); Tim Youngs, ‘“Il nous faut apprendre ce qui manque à notre culture”: le Congo réécrit’, in Seuils et Traverses, 153–69; and Debbie Lisle, The Global Politics of Contemporary Travel Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

37. Pour une littérature voyageuse, 11.

38. Delporte, Histoire du journalisme, 3.

39. David Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993).

40. Ferenczi, L'Invention du journalisme, 9, and Delporte, Histoire du journalisme, 3.

41. Mark Z. Muggli, ‘Joan Didion and the Problem of Journalistic Travel Writing’, in Temperamental Journeys: Essays on the Modern Literature of Travel, ed. Michael Kowalewski (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1992), 176–94.

42. Guillebaud won in 1972, and Weber in 1992.

43. Les Confettis de l’empire (Paris: Seuil, 1976), Un voyage vers l’Asie (Paris: Seuil, 1979), Un voyage en Océanie (Paris: Seuil, 1980), Le Rendez-vous d’Irkoutsk (Paris: Arléa, 1990), La Colline des anges, with photographs by Raymond Depardon (Paris: Seuil, 1993), Sur la route des croisades (Paris: Arléa, 1993), and La Porte des larmes, with photographs by Raymond Depardon (Paris: Seuil, 1996). All seven texts are reprinted in La Traversée du monde, presented by Jean Lacouture (Paris: Arléa, 1998) and all references below refer to this edition.

44. Paris: Arléa, 2002.

45. Voyage au pays de toutes les Russies (Paris: Quai Voltaire, 1992; repr. Éditions Payot et Rivages, 2003), La Route de la drogue: voyage en opiomie (Paris: Arléa, 1996; reprinted as Chasseurs de dragons: voyage en opiomie, Éditions Payot et Rivages, 2000), Le Faucon afghan (Paris: Éditions Robert Laffont, 2001), and Le Grand Festin de l’Orient (Paris: Éditions Robert Laffont, 2004).

46. Ferenczi, Le Journalisme, 5–6.

47. Boucharenc, L’Écrivain-reporter, 39. Muggli suggests that travel writing should distinguish itself from journalism by looking beyond immediate events, in ‘Joan Didion and the Problem of Journalistic Travel Writing’, 182–3.

48. Jean-Didier Urbain, Secrets de voyage: menteurs, imposteurs et autres voyageurs impossibles (Paris: Éditions Payot et Rivages, 1998; repr. 2003), 34. See also Michael Cronin, Across the Lines: Travel, Language, Translation (Cork: Cork University Press, 2000), 22–3.

49. Guillebaud, La Porte des larmes, 663–6.

50. Guillebaud, Un voyage vers l’Asie, 141–5.

51. http://www.routard.com/mag_invite/id_inv/136/jean_claude_guillebaud.htm. Interviewed in September 2003. Accessed on September 21, 2007.

52. http://www.routard.com/mag_invite/id_inv/136/jean_claude_guillebaud.htm. Interviewed in September 2003. Accessed September 21, 2007.

53. See, for example: ‘Quelques livres pour comprendre comment on en est arrive là’, Le Monde, October 4, 2001, and ‘La guerre, succès de librairie’, La Tribune, November 14, 2001.

54. Guillebaud, Sur la route des croisades, 580.

55. Corinne Fowler, Chasing Tales: Travel Writing, Journalism and the History of the British Ideas about Afghanistan (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007).

56. Boucharenc, L'Écrivain-reporter, 11, 39.

57. Guillebaud, Sur la route des croisades, 574.

58. Guillebaud, Les Confettis de l’empire, 9.

59. Guillebaud, Les Confettis de l’empire, 11–22.

60. Boucharenc, L'Écrivain-reporter, 90, quoting Paul Morand, Le Voyage (Paris: Hachette, 1927; repr. Pocket, 1996), 57.

61. Weber, Voyage au pays de toutes les Russies, 80–81, 89–95, 125, 151–7.

62. For further discussion of the relationship between tourism and travel writing see Catharine Mee, ‘“Che brutta invenzione il turismo!”: Tourism and Anti-tourism in Current French and Italian Travel Writing’, Comparative Critical Studies, 4, no. 2 (2007): 269–82.

63. Chesneaux, L'Art du voyage, 178.

64. Debbie Lisle is particularly critical of travel writers for failing to examine their subject positions and calls for travel writing to be politicised. See The Global Politics of Contemporary Travel Writing.

65. Boucharenc, L'Écrivain-reporter, 135, 142.

66. Weber, Voyage au pays de toutes les Russies, 13.

67. For a discussion of issues of language and translation in travel writing see Cronin's Across the Lines.

68. François Maspero, Les Passagers du Roissy-Express (Paris: Seuil, 1990).

69. On the ethics of travel writing see Corinne Fowler and Ludmilla Kostova, eds., ‘Travel and Ethics’, special issue of Journeys: The International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing, 4, no. 1 (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2003).