"In 1894 Joris-Karl Huysman wrote Against Nature (the novel that inspired Oscar Wilde to write A Picture of Dorian Grey)
at one point, the Parisian hero of Huysman's tale, fascinated by the
novels of Charles Dickens, orders a taxi and visits an English pub in
Paris, before embarking on his trip to London.
Except...he finds himself unable to complete the journey and returns home.
Whereupon he realises that the imaginary experience is more than a preferable substitute for the real thing."
A robinsonner is a traveller who does not travel. A cousin of the flâneur, the robinsonner takes their name from the character of Robinson Crusoe. Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe without ever having visited a desert island himself, or indeed having ever left Europe. Defoe has a special place in the history of psychogeography, with Merlin Coverley claiming that his 1722 novel A Journal of the Plague Year represents the beginning of the psychogeographic tradition. Patrick Keiller, of course, references this in his character of Robinson, who's (adopted) name is also a reference to his being 'marooned' in Britain.
