Thanks to my fellow typospherian Joe van Cleave’s recommendation, in Frederick Turner’s In the Land of the Temple Caves: From St. Emilion to Paris’ St. Sulpice I now have both a sparkling addition to my annual Top Books Read (posted every December) and to my workshop’s list of recommended literary travel memoirs. What prompted me to read In the Land of the Temple Caves, aside from an avid interest in American literary travel memoir, is that I’ve been a devotée of rock art ever since I first encountered some jaw-dropping examples of it in remotest Baja California and, as those of you who follow this blog well know, I have long been at work on a book about Far West Texas, and that includes the Lower Pecos which has some the most spectacular and ancient rock art of the Americas. (Listen in to my podcast Gifts of the Ancient Ones: Greg Williams on the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands; also see my 2015 post “On the Trail of the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos.”)
Ring-a-ling to Dr. Jung! I happened to get my hands on Turner’s memoir just before a trip to Paris in which, not having heard of his book, I had planned to visit St. Sulpice and so, by happenstance, on the very day I finished the book, which concludes in St. Sulpice, there I was, looking at the very same Eugène Delacroix murals. That was wiggy.
I regret that I do not have the time this week to give In the Land of the Temple Caves the thoughtful review it deserves. Suffice to say, it came out over a decade ago, and I am astonished that I had not heard of it earlier. It deserves to be considered a classic of American, and indeed English language, literary travel memoir.
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