oa Eten! Lezen! Reizen! - Traditie, toerisme en lifestyle bij Bart van Loo en Geerten Meijsing

This article analyzes the literary non-fiction of Bart van Loo, especially his trilogy of books devoted to French literature and culture, De Frankrijktrilogie (2011). Developing Jim Collins’s penetrating account of ‘popular literary culture’ and of the ways in which literary classics are nowadays converted into entertaining ‘good reads’, the article argues that the literary tradition currently functions as a guide to the ‘good life’. Crucial here, as a comparison with Geerten Meijsing’s similar use of the Italian cultural heritage demonstrates, is the opposition between tasteless consumerism and an alternative, ‘literary’ form of lifestyle, which weds elegant literature to tasteful forms of fashion, tourism and gastronomy.