Souvenir (Object Lessons)
Author(s): Rolf Potts
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. For as long as people have traveled to distant lands, they have brought home objects to certify the journey. More than mere merchandise, these travel souvenirs take on a personal and cultural meaning that goes beyond the object itself. Drawing on several millennia of examples-from the relic-driven quests of early Christians, to the mass-produced tchotchkes that line the shelves of a Disney gift shop-travel writer Rolf Potts delves into a complicated history that explores issues of authenticity, cultural obligation, market forces, human suffering, and self-presentation. Souvenirs are shown for what they really are: not just objects, but personalized forms of folk storytelling that enable people to make sense of the world and their place in it. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
Product Information
Drawing on a mix of historical, philosophical, and personal inquiry, Souvenir explores how we use mementos of travel to structure our memories and give meaning to our place in the world.
Rolf Potts writes with the soul of an explorer and a scholar's love of research. Much like the objects that we bestow with meaning, this book carries a rich, lingering resonance. A gem. * Andrew McCarthy, actor, director and author of The Longest Way Home (2013) * In this slender but engrossing study of the phenomenology of souvenirs, Rolf Potts pinpoints the strange duality of travel, for where you 'go' is rarely identical to where you go. After reading it, I'll never be able to look at a Statue of Liberty key chain, Grand Canyon postcard, or Eiffel Tower ashtray in quite the same way again. If you love to travel, this book is essential. * Tom Bissell, journalist and author of Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve (2016) *
Rolf Potts is the author of Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel (2003), which has sold more than 150,000 copies and has been translated into five languages. His other publications include Marco Polo Didn't Go There: Stories and Revelations From One Decade as a Postmodern Travel Writer (2008), which won the Chatwin Prize for international travel writing in 2009, and The Geto Boys (33 1/3 series, Bloomsbury, 2016). Potts has reported from more than 60 countries worldwide, for the likes of The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Believer, the New York Times Magazine, Slate.com, Salon.com, National Geographic Traveler, Sports Illustrated, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Guardian.
Preface 1: Introduction: An Embarrassment of Eiffel Towers 2: Souvenirs in the Age of Pilgrimage 3: Souvenirs in the Age of Enlightenment Interlude: Museums of the Personal 4: Souvenirs in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction 5: Souvenirs and Human Suffering 6: Souvenirs and (the Complicated Notion of) Authenticity 7: Souvenirs, Memory, and the Shortness of Life Notes Index
General Fields
- :
- : Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- : Bloomsbury Academic USA
- : 01 March 2018
- : 165mm X 121mm
- : United States
- : books
Special Fields
- : Rolf Potts
- : Paperback
- : 144
- : 9 b/w illustrations
