What’s Inside Your Literary Knapsack?
Agnès Madrigal, Sara Parrot, and Jules X
Madrigalia is headquartered in San Francisco, but literary inspiration is everywhere. When we travel, we find more stories to tell, some of them specific to where we are visiting. Our literary adventures are captured here, in our series Literary Knapsack, and our other travel tips, such as our M3 series, can be found on our Medium pages. To inaugurate our first article in this series, we’re sharing what we carry in our own “literary knapsacks.”
Literary Knapsack is a Madrigalia series that explores literary themes in various locales, including writers’ sites, related books, and assorted impressions. Photograph by Cavan Images
Agnès Madrigal: When I take a trip, I tend to have two “literary” bags, in addition to the usual luggage. One bag is for the airplane and the hotel. In it, I usually have my laptop computer, a larger notebook, and a couple of paperback books—I still read printed books even though various friends have urged me, as an avid reader, to switch to a Kindle, especially for these trips. This first bag gives me a “home base” that includes enough to keep me occupied on the airplane where options are limited, and enough to keep writing at night when I return to a hotel room at the end of a day of sightseeing.
Agnès Madrigal’s bag from a recent trip, including a copy of Marguerite Duras’s The War: A Memoir. Photograph by Madrigalit
The second bag is a smaller bag, one I can carry with me easily anywhere. In this bag I have my phone and wallet, of course, and, for writing, a very small Moleskine notebook and at least two ink pens. These are the tools I use if I am sitting in a café and want to write down ideas or, even better, if a story strikes me when I am out and about. Many of my writings have begun inside these tiny journals! And I keep two pens in case one runs out, but recently, on a trip to Marguerite Duras’s grave in Paris, I was grateful to have two in order to leave one with the others gathered in a tin on top of her gravestone. It was a very moving experience to see the artifacts of other writers paying homage to her so simply and so powerfully, each with just a simple pen.
“In this bag I have my phone and wallet, of course, and, for writing, a very small Moleskine notebook and at least two ink pens. These are the tools I use if I am sitting in a café and want to write down ideas or, even better, if a story strikes me when I am out and about.”
—Agnès Madrigal
Sara Parrot: I am probably the more typical “blogger.” I carry everything with me wherever I go: the laptop, the phone, the paper tablet, the pen. If I find a café I like, I can camp out for hours, ordering a succession of cups of coffee or, after some successful writing, maybe a glass of wine. Even at home, my “desk” is portable. I’m as comfortable going to a nearby coffee shop and spreading out on a table there as I am at home, at the writing desk I’ve fashioned in the corner of my living room. I used to carry guidebooks with me when visiting new places, but now I bookmark it all online, and use my phone or my computer to help me arrange for a day of sightseeing—and writing. A successful day for me is, after spending hours in the morning and early afternoon visiting attractions, sitting down in a calm space in the mid-afternoon and writing about those experiences before going to dinner. Later, I feel like I have fresh insights about what I did and saw, and I can pull from those texts for some of my writings here on Madrigalia.
“If I find a café I like, I can camp out for hours, ordering a succession of cups of coffee. . . . After spending hours . . . visiting attractions, [I love] sitting down in a calm space in the mid-afternoon and writing about those experiences.”
—Sara Parrot
One of Jules X’s old notebooks. Photograph by Madrigalit
Jules X: Lately, I write a lot in my phone. It sounds crazy, but in the midst of a museum or in the audience at a performance, I find it much more conspicuous than opening up a notebook, even a small one, and jotting into it. If I am working after I’ve visited an exhibition or a play, for example, I add to those initial thoughts, usually on my computer now. I used to—and sometimes I still do if the venue is right—bring a notebook in my backpack as well as pens and markers, and I’d write and draw into it after walking through a gallery or after a concert. It seems outmoded to me now, and that’s probably why I’ve shifted, but sometimes I really do miss the rawness of the paper and the fun of the colored drawings or even just marks to highlight something. When I travel, my phone goes everywhere, and it’s really all I use. At the end of the day, like Agnès, I revise, rewrite, write anew, and organize my thoughts at home or wherever home is for that moment. I tend to travel light and freely, and I try to write like that, too.