Bypassing Paris, Horizontally and Vertically

Recent scholarship of literary travel writing focuses on two basic axes: the first is ­horizontal, its trademarks haste and end-orientation; the second is vertical, and it opposes the other’s speed with deceleration and its focus on getting there with close attention to the details of the world to which its traveller is present. Charles Forsdick has emphasized the usefulness of these opposed axes of travel (writing), but he also sounds a word of caution, noting, for example, that cultural geographers prefer not to talk of oppositions, but instead situate the relative pace and focus of travel on a continuum.1 As Michael Cronin writes, ‘Literary travel involves [...] constant shifts between the macroscopic scale of the horizontal and the microscopic scale of the vertical.’2 Furthermore, vertical and horizontal travel can produce similar effects despite their clear opposition; that is, they can coincide in their difference. I vividly remember walking briskly past Notre-Dame on my way to the Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville to buy a part for some roller-blinds and noticing that I had passed by, without looking at, Paris’s iconic cathedral. (I might add that my teleological quest for a very particular type of nut meant that I also, and for the same reason, failed to look at Paris’s most iconic department store.) In that instance, pure horizontality took me away from my surroundings. Pure verticality can have the same effect. Walking idly along a street in Paris, gazing intently at one’s surroundings, will bring into sharp focus objects and events that are remarkable but that lack the perspective, in this case the Parisianness, afforded by a bird’s eye view. Deceleration can take your eye away from the geographical distinctiveness of the site of travel, encouraging an inspection that is too close, especially in urban locales (where things and people can easily take precedence over views). In both instances, which sit starkly at either end of the continuum, the traveller is simultaneously in Paris and absent to it or not conscious of it.