The writing continues. I’m currently working on the chapter on literary tourism and today, I’m sharing part of the introductory section that establishes a framework of the intersections of regional and gothic tourism practices, which certainly influence how people navigate and experience literary tourism of King’s Maine.

Two subcategories of literary tourism that are essential in considering readers’ and travelers’ experiences in relation to King are regional tourism and gothic tourism. In Haunted States: An American Gothic Guidebook, Miranda Corcoran chronicles her cross-country exploration of key sites across the United States, with one of her key questions being “do conceptions of horror shift as they incarnate across different regions?” (9). A distinct sense of place is foundational to literary tourism and Corcoran considers “how unique permutations of horror might arise out of particular histories or distinct physical environments,” a reading and experience which is grounded in the discourse of psychogeography, which “maps the effects of geographical environment, both built and natural, not only on the emotions and behaviour of individuals, but also on the cultural artefacts they produce and consume” (10). King’s Maine has its own distinct characteristics, from his haunted small towns to his isolated islands, but beyond the specificity of the state, King literary tourism must also be situated within the larger context of New England gothic, which includes the haunts of authors like Poe, Hawthorne, Washington Irving, H.P. Lovecraft, and Shirley Jackson. In The New England Grimpendium: A Guide to Macabre and Ghastly Sites, J.W. Ocker argues that

In the rough rectangle comprising the continental United States, New England is surely its darkest corner. Maybe it’s because of it’s age; maybe it’s because its landscape dies more gloriously in autumn than in many places and then is buried deeper and more somberly in its winter than many other places. Maybe it’s because so many of our classic horror authors were born here, making one surmise that whatever interior darkness they were able to express with their unique talents might be present in most New Englanders. (10)

The New England region has a rich and distinctive literary tradition, in which horror and the gothic are well represented, connecting the region and its history inextricably with both classic and contemporary tales of terror.

While Corcocan and Ocker’s travelogues explore the intersections of regional and gothic tourism, with his focused consideration of New England and the region’s distinctive identity, Emma McEvoy considers gothic tourism more broadly. As McEvoy argues, a traveler who is engaged in distinctly gothic tourism brings a specific framework to their experiences that deviates from that of the more general literary tourist. As she explains, “Gothic tourism is inherently different from other modes of tourism in a number of ways. In particular, it is characterized by very particular different attitudes to place, to affect, to the question of genre, and to the phenomenon of performance” (Gothic Tourism 6). In foregrounding the gothic perspective in literary tourism, the emotions and sensations associated with a distinctive sense of place are privileged, with these feelings and the embodied experience of them intersecting with and heightening the central position of place in other types of literary tourism. Much like the historical influence that Ocker notes in The New England Grimpendium, McEvoy identifies these connections between past, present, and place as defining features of gothic tourism, arguing that “Gothic tourism has much to tell us about particular places and locality. It is bound up with the way in which we think about our past and our surroundings, and with the ways in which we construct our identities. If we want to understand how Gothic tourism operates […] then it’s necessary to frame it, to think about it in relation to its local circumstances” (7). By participating in or consuming literary tourism experiences in general and gothic tourism specifically, readers and travelers pursue geographic and affective connection, and embodied engagement with real world places that resonate and echo within the literary works they have inspired.