Practice Makes Perfect

A quick tour of the city, and then boredom

I don’t really look at cities. I write almost all my travel stories in a tub or in a hotel room. Not ever 

having to be a tourist is my dream. A tourist, for me, is an observer, a person who wants to know. I, 

on the other hand, do not desire to know. I desire to feel. I need a destination. I am walking in a city 

that I’m just getting to know; I’m on my way to meet a close friend. What I’m focusing on is the route 

and my desire to be at my friend’s place. What I really prefer is being indoors, in a bar, in a book-

store, at a friend’s place—sort of everywhere. When there is a particular destination in a city, where 

I am giving a lecture or promoting my books, someone usually meets me and takes me, without fail, 

on a short tour of the city. That is my least favorite part of the visit, because I don’t like to listen to 

stories about a city and its history. And I definitely don’t like being shown monuments or important 

sites. What I really like to do is to simply stroll around, noticing only the minimum that attracts my 

attention. This is how, after a period of incubation, I end up getting a feel for a city. I want the city to 

come to me. I don’t want to discover it. I want it to discover me. Translated by Zoran Minderovic.

(From an interview with Dany Laferrière by Annie Heminway in Montreal, Canada, in Feb-

ruary 2009, for the blog La ville est ailleurs, aubepine.blog.lemonde.fr, by Frédéric Antoine Bros-

son and Annie Heminway.)

285-646_EM_Heminway.indd   644

5/29/18   9:29 AM

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