One spring more than 200 years ago, Xavier de Maistre, a well-to-do, well-read French army officer and balloon enthusiast, was sentenced to house arrest for a dueling incident. He spent 42 days in his bedroom, in a modest apartment on the top floor of a building in Turin, and wrote a whimsical travelogue of his time there called "A Journey Around My Room."
Wearing his "traveling clothes" — a bathrobe and pajamas — he visited his comfy sofa, his desk, his cheerful pink-and-white bed (colors he recommended to his readers because they compelled him to wake up happy) and his memories, seeing all of these elements with fresh eyes. (He wrote a sequel, "Nocturnal Expedition Around My Room," in which he journeyed by looking out his window at the night sky.)
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One spring more than 200 years ago, Xavier de Maistre, a well-to-do, well-read French army officer and balloon enthusiast, was sentenced to house arrest for a dueling incident. He spent 42 days in his bedroom, in a modest apartment on the top floor of a building in Turin, and [...]
