Sunday 4 April 2010

Explornography

What was supposed to be a quick visit to the Stanfords on Long Acre, to buy a map, turned into a half-hour browsing session, yesterday. It's always the same. I go in for one thing and end up being seduced by all those shelves groaning with guidebooks, tales of exploration, derring-do etc. Glancing around at others doing likewise though, I couldn't help but chuckle as the word explornography came to mind. Meaning "The vicarious thrill of exploring when there is nothing left to explore", it was coined by John Tierney in his 1998 New York Times article Going Where A Lot of Other Dudes With Really Great Equipment Have Gone Before. Now hailed as a classic, read the article before the NY Times throws a paywall around its content (although it will probably always be easy to find something like this).

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