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Informationen zum Autor Bernd Stiegler is professor of twentieth-century German literature and of literature and media at the University of Konstanz. Peter Filkins is a poet and teaches literature at Bard College at Simon's Rock. Klappentext Beginning with a consideration of Xavier de Maistre s 1794" Voyage de autour de ma chamber, " an account of Maistre s forty-two day journey around his room while enduring house arrest, Stiegler reflects on the many different ways that the idea of traveling while at home armchair travel--have manifested in the modern era. Through twenty-one legs, or short chapters it moves quickly from the eighteenth century to consider a wide variety of episodes all the way up to the present day. Along the way, we encounter writers as diverse as Maistre, Goncourt, Roussel, Beckett, Calvino, Perec, Robbe-Grillet, and Cortazar. Stiegler is interested in the idea of travel more as a state of mind than as a physical activity, and the book takes on the quality of a meditation here and there. It will find an eclectic audience curious to learn about a subject they may never have thought about before, but which they will immediately recognize as pertinent to how we are all travelers in one way or another in the modern world. " "Bernd Stiegler introduces us to a history of travelogues, all written by trailblazers who measure the span of their adventures by the number of paces between the fireside armchair and the window casement. Stiegler shows the degree to which the room of the writer has become a microcosm, already stocked with enough exotic detail to place itself at the infinite disposal of our curiosity. The book suggests that, no matter how far any wandering sightseer might travel, what really embarks upon the trek is our imagination."--Christian B k, author of Euonia Armchair travel may seem like an oxymoron. Doesn't travel require us to leave the house? No passport, no currency, no security screening required - the luxury of armchair travel is accessible to us all. In this book, the author celebrates this convenient, magical means of transport in all its many forms....
