Books & a bitter anniversary

Hi Subscribers (and welcome new ones)!

I had promised to give you another taster from my forthcoming book “Atlas of Dark Destinations”. After I had already disclosed the front cover in the newsletter at the end of March (btw. the pre-order page on Amazon now also comes with an image of the cover), I now give you a sample from inside the book, namely one of the section intros’ double pages with a map on which the individual dark places covered in the section are marked by numbered red dots.

I like the way the designer worked around the map, with the countries covered in the section in dark grey and the lands around it in a lighter grey, so the countries don’t hang in thin air, as it were, and as used to be the case at an earlier stage of the design. This is much, much better. The sea is finely dotted – unfortunately, though, in this reduced resolution it looks like there is a certain pattern to it, but that’s not actually the case at full 100% size.
  

So much for my own book. For my website I’ve just written a lengthy review about a brand-new book that is the very first monograph in German about the topic of dark tourism (in German except for the label ‘dark tourism’ itself, which has become an established Anglicism worldwide). The title is: “Dark Tourism – Reisen zu Orten des Leids, des Schreckens und des Todes” (which roughly translates as “travel to places of suffering, horror/terror and death’), and is by Albrecht Steinecke. Here’s the link to my original German-language review, for those who can read the language … and for those who can’t here’s the link to my abridged English version (for English readers I figured I didn’t have to go into quite as much detail, hence).

It’s a semi-academic book, in the sense that it primarily gives an overview of the scholarly study of dark tourism, but it is not itself a contribution to the academic debate. Instead it’s just an introduction to it – and at the same time an overview of the various types and shades of dark tourism. It’s written in a very accessible form, unlike much of the seriously academic writing about the subject, which is frequently steeped in convoluted high-brow verbiage. This book is different, neither “dry” nor too “easy” but at a happy intermediate level. I like that. It’s a sober and sound overview and introduction.

That is not to say that I didn’t have anything to find fault with. I did. On the one hand, I criticized the fact that the book gives the same depth and space to some fringe areas of dark tourism that some, myself included, wouldn’t even consider part of dark tourism proper at all, such as slum tourism or those commercial, theatrical “house of horror museums” of the “Dungeons” Group. But since these fringe phenomena do indeed get quite a bit of attention in academic writing as well as in the media (probably precisely because they are so easy to portray in a negative light), it’s OK that they feature in this book. On the other hand, the author does not cover some areas that I would consider core dark tourism, in particular sites associated with the Cold War or the Iron Curtain (of which Germany has plenty, so this omission is a bit inexplicable).

The book also raises criticisms itself, but sometimes overshoots the mark, e.g. when it criticizes Alcatraz as mere entertainment, and a media-distorted “hyperreal” place. Moreover it does the same with Chernobyl too – and hence both places end up categorized towards the “lightest” end of dark tourism, the least serious and most entertainment-oriented end of the scale. On my website, in contrast, Chernobyl is assigned to the very darkest end. I fear the author was just going by studies about, or reports from, only the standardized, big-operator-run, day-return short trips with coachloads of tourists, which are indeed a bit superficial. But that’s by no means all there is to Chernobyl tourism. Far from it!

Those points aside, though, the book is very good. What I liked in particular is how the author frequently and vehemently debunks various misconceptions about dark tourism as something morally dubious, like merely morbid voyeurism. For one thing, such value judgements are only assumed, like a reflex, but as the author underscores it is illegitimate to infer from the presence of visitors at a “dark” site that their motivations must also be dark and morally wrong. In fact, as the author also stresses, countless case studies by academics have proven that for the most part the actual motivations of visitors to dark sites are perfectly respectable and revolve more around wanting to learn and better understand, broaden one’s horizons, but also to feel a sense of place authenticity. I hope journalists may take note of this!

So much for my book review.
  

Finally, on the blog (which, as you may have noticed, is now https, i.e. secure, finally) there’s been only one new post this week, marking a bitter anniversary, namely that it’s been one year since my DT page, and my personal account, were purged from Facebook. That in turn made me set up this blog instead. For that reason I now reposted the very first photo I put on the blog last May, which was also the very one that triggered the purge in the first place. See for yourself (in my archived version of the ex-FB page on my website) if you think that that post really deserved the digital death penalty that was meted out against me (with no explanation given and no means of appeal) …

I’d like to stress that I can personally live perfectly well without Facebook, but I still can’t quite stomach the injustice and especially the fact that this purge cut me off from the 3000+ followers I had, especially since that means I cannot announce to them the release of my book, and many had already expressed an interest in buying a copy. So this brutal censorship will actually cost me and the book’s publishers real money.

But since it’s now been a year since the purge, I will refrain from mentioning this again, except occasionally when I lift something from my archive for reposting on the blog, as I have done a few times before (but only to indicate the fact it’s from the archive, without further lamenting the reasons behind it all).