• Home
  • About
    • Our Supporters
    • Corporate Support
    • The Hub
    • Why This Site?
    • Our Philosophy
    • The Challenges
    • Missed a Post?
  • The Basics
    • Historical Tradition >
      • Cave of Altamira
      • Tutankhamun's Tomb
      • The Bayeux Tapestry
      • Stations of the Cross
      • A Rake's Progress
    • Terminology >
      • Defining the Form
      • The Language of Comics
      • Filmic Language, Part 1
      • Filmic Language, Part 2
      • Language of the Gaze
    • A Rationale for Comics
    • Next Steps
    • Glen's Portfolio >
      • Boldprint
      • Timeline
      • The 10
      • Graphic Poetry
      • Boldprint Kids Graphic Readers
      • Boldprint Graphic Novels
      • Interface and ILit
      • Remix
      • Issues 21
      • Other Books
  • Graphica
    • Scholarship
    • Happening Now
    • Graphic Novels
    • About the Form
    • For Educators
  • Classroom
    • Activities >
      • Exemplars
    • Curriculum Connections >
      • Videos
      • PowerPoints
    • FAQ
    • Links
    • Support
  • Store
    • Codes
    • Go for the Pin!
  • Contact
Comics in Education
  • Home
  • About
    • Our Supporters
    • Corporate Support
    • The Hub
    • Why This Site?
    • Our Philosophy
    • The Challenges
    • Missed a Post?
  • The Basics
    • Historical Tradition >
      • Cave of Altamira
      • Tutankhamun's Tomb
      • The Bayeux Tapestry
      • Stations of the Cross
      • A Rake's Progress
    • Terminology >
      • Defining the Form
      • The Language of Comics
      • Filmic Language, Part 1
      • Filmic Language, Part 2
      • Language of the Gaze
    • A Rationale for Comics
    • Next Steps
    • Glen's Portfolio >
      • Boldprint
      • Timeline
      • The 10
      • Graphic Poetry
      • Boldprint Kids Graphic Readers
      • Boldprint Graphic Novels
      • Interface and ILit
      • Remix
      • Issues 21
      • Other Books
  • Graphica
    • Scholarship
    • Happening Now
    • Graphic Novels
    • About the Form
    • For Educators
  • Classroom
    • Activities >
      • Exemplars
    • Curriculum Connections >
      • Videos
      • PowerPoints
    • FAQ
    • Links
    • Support
  • Store
    • Codes
    • Go for the Pin!
  • Contact
Comics in Education
What's new?

What Makes Graphic Travel Writing So Great?

4/1/2014
by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com
Picture

It's Authentic, It's Honest, It's Eminently Human...

Guy Delisle Meipzig 2012
Since I'm delivering a workshop in ten days' time on the graphic travelogue, I thought I'd take a moment to talk about what makes them so powerful for me. I'm especially fond of Guy Delisle, whose works like Jerusalem, Chronicles from the Holy City and Pyongyang, A Journey in North Korea are exceptional examples of their genre. Some of my fondness for these two titles, of course, is owed to my enjoyment of Delisle's unique style as a writer-artist.
If I had to explain what else prompts my particular interest in these books, however, and in the graphic travelogue in general, I think I'd say that I always find something fundamentally honest and eminently human about them.  I often find these qualities to be in evidence in travel literature in general--whether it's Bill Bryson's self-deprecating humour in A Walk in the Woods or Jon Krakauer's efforts to wrestle with what happened during the ill-fated Everest expedition of 1996 in Into Thin Air.  (I teach travel writing in the IB program at The York School in Toronto. We do Krakauer's landmark non-fiction novel as our text for the first unit of the course, having substituted it for Bryson's at the start of last year).

You'd think that travelling to a far away place and undergoing a remarkable experience might well end up being a potential recipe for overwriting. If the writer has been transformed by the place he or she traveled to because it was so meaningful, so profound, so unlike what anyone else must have ever experienced, then it's possible he or she would be too carried away with it all to write effectively. I suppose from time to time this happens, but I seldom find it does in the graphic travelogue.

And I think, when it comes right down to it, that the answer lies in what a graphic travelogue is. It's a story about travel in words and pictures. And although it wouldn't be too difficult to manipulate the former to embellish one's story of travel, doing the same with the latter is much more difficult to pull off. A lot of what I find authentic about Delisle is how he depicts his reaction to a place--that way in Pyongyang that he shows himself just sort of standing or sitting in a place, looking around and shaking his head in mild to moderate disbelief.

Sometimes with Krakauer and Bryson I can sense they're taking the odd liberty in their character descriptions (with Bryson, of course, it's nearly always to create humour). But with Delisle and with a number of other writers of the graphic travelogue, the visual nearly always helps me to believe in the authenticity of the experience they're sharing with me. 

And that, I think, is the great gift that graphic travel writing can give us.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Follow @teachingcomics
    Follow @GlenDowney


    our  store
    our codes
    navigation
    contact us

    Picture

    Glen Downey

    Dr. Glen Downey is an award-winning children's author, educator, and academic from Oakville, Ontario. He works as a children's writer for Rubicon Publishing, a reviewer for PW Comics World, an editor for the Sequart Organization, and serves as the Chair of English and Drama at The York School in Toronto.


    Picture

    If you've found this site useful and would like to donate to Comics in Education, we'd really appreciate the support!

    Picture

    Comics in Education

    Archives

    February 2019
    September 2018
    June 2018
    March 2018
    April 2017
    November 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    September 2015
    August 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014


    RSS Feed

Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture

(C) 2014-21
​Comics in Education


3M Visitors

Contact Us