Why a Booktrail?
2018: 43 and feel you’ve not seen much of the world? Louie Hake is on a journey
The Promise of Elsewhere
What you need to know before your trail
Louie Hake is forty-three and teaches architectural history at a third-rate college in Michigan. In an attempt to fend off what has become a soul-crushing existential crisis, he decides to treat himself to a tour of the world’s most breathtaking architectural sites.
Louie gets waylaid on his very first stop in Rome–ludicrously, spectacularly so–and fails to reach most of his other destinations.
He embarks on a doomed romance with a jilted bride celebrating her ruined marriage plans alone in London. And in the Arctic he finds that turf houses and aluminum sheds don’t amount to much of an architectural tradition.
It soon becomes clear that Louie’s grand journey is less about where his wanderings have taken him and more about where his past encounters with romance have not.
Locations
Reset- Italy - Rome
- A: The Partheon
- B: Forum
- C: Sistine Chapel
- England - London
- D: The British Museum
- E: The National Gallery
- F: Tate Modern
- Greenland
- G: Qaqqatsiaq
Travel Guide
Travel the world visiting as many architectural sites as you can. Sounds good!
A few on Louie’s itinerary:
Rome
Places of note: Partheon, cobbled streets and alleyways, street side cafes.
“The damp air smells of car exhaust and pastry. It’s cool and breezy. He passes a woman’s clothing store, where the tall gun-metal gray female mannequins – high cheek boned, high breasted – look down on him with an unnerving lunar disdain. He passes a gioielleria, a jewelry store, still open and a closed latteria, and an erborista which sells vitamins.”
” As an American dinning in Europe, his chief responsibility is the steering clear of tourist traps.”
London
Louie’s locations – British Museum, National Gallery and Tate Modern to name but three
He’s just so damned glad to be here. Good Lord, London still has phone booths! And good Lord again, – he overheard a woman postal clerk actually utter the phrase “you shouldn’t have done.”
Greenland
The main setting here is fictional which is just as well…
His first flies to Iceland’s Reyjkjavik and then on to Qaqqatkivisut, Greenland. Qaqqatkivisut? “The first flight of his life to a destination he has no clue how to pronounce.”
“And Qaqqatkivisut is a dump – a chilly dump Generally we speak metaphorically when calling a town a dump. But Qaqqatkivisut is a literal dump. Apparently when any body wearies of anything, or finds it outworn, he drops it at his feet and shuffles away”
Louie has read that lies not so far from one of the most active calving glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere. Here and there, through the mist, a stray and forlorn low grey lump squats om the gray, resigned waters of the harbor: Louie’s first icebergs.”
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Promise of Elsewhere
Destination: Rome, London, Greenland Author/Guide: Brad Leithauser Departure Time: 2000s
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