The Beauty of Provincial Spain

Journey To The Alcarria 

by Camilo José Cela

"Going through th Entrepena, the traveler sees a beautiful stage setting, exactly as if it were in a theater, of great craggy naked rocks and dead trees split by lightning."   -  Journey to the Alcarria, Camillo Jose Cela.

A sensitive portrayal of provincial Spain. Its people are thoughtful and caring in their physical appearance, psychology, and values.  A few days were spent in Alcarria by Camilo José Cela, the undisputed master of the Spanish novel of the twentieth century and the author of The Family of Pascal Duarte and The Hive. His travel sketch has a brilliant sheen to it. It describes a trip to several different parts of the peninsula, such as Cifuentes, Soledad, and Guadalajara. You leave with the impression that you were actually there, taking part in the adventure firsthand. In this translation, it is an enjoyable journey.

Enchanting Island

South Wind 

by Norman Douglas

“History deals with situations and figures not imaginary but real. It demands therefore a combination of qualities unnecessary to the poet or writer of romance - glacial judgment coupled with fervent sympathy. The poet may be an uninspired illiterate, the romance-writer an uninspired hack. Under no circumstances can either of them be accused of wrongdoing or deceiving the public, however incongruous their efforts. They write well or badly, and there the matter ends. The historian, who fails in his duty, deceives the reader and wrongs the dead.”   ― Norman Douglas, South Wind



South Wind is a unique novel. Rather than presenting a traditional plot it seems like an olio or mixture of lectures and observations on various, often obscure, aspects of geology, climatology, history, morality, religion, and folklore, among other topics. The author's use of articulate characters confined to a restricted setting allows for ample airing of views and recalls the methods of English novelist Thomas Love Peacock, whose country house novels were once very popular.

South Wind’s setting itself becomes a character as the island Nepenthe, which is not to be found on a map, comes alive as the narrative progresses.  The literary reference is to the magical potion given to Helen by Polydamna the wife of the noble Egyptian Thon; it quells all sorrows with forgetfulness; figuratively, nepenthe means "that which chases away sorrow" (Odyssey, Book 4, v. 219–221). However, it is usually considered a fictional version of the isle of Capri, about which Douglas wrote a series of scholarly pamphlets and upon which he was living when he completed South Wind. It reminded me of Shirley Hazzard's literary meditation, Greene on Capri in which she also captured the essence of the island. She also noted the friendship between Graham Greene and Douglas in the late 1940's when Greene first began to frequent the isle, "he had the company, when he chose, of a handful of lively and literary resident compatriots . . . [and] had enjoyed the last effulgence of Norman Douglas . . ."(Greene on Capri, p 47)

Douglas did not deny his novel’s debt to a real location but insisted that Ischia, Ponza, and the Lipari Islands (all lying off the southwest coast of Italy) were the actual sources for Nepenthe’s natural scenery. Douglas even incorporated a version of his observations regarding the pumice stone industry of the Lipari Islands, the subject of one of his first publications. Douglas’s creation had deep roots in his own experience—the details of which he drew upon heavily.

The novel’s characters are the result of much the same observational mode which allows the reader, if he is willing, to gradually develop an acquaintance with the place through the idiosyncrasies of the characters.  An example may suffice: "Mr. Keith was a perfect host. He had the right word for everybody; his infectious conviviality made them all straightaway at their ease. The overdressed native ladies, the priests and officials moving about in prim little circles, were charmed with his affable manner 'so different from most Englishmen';" (p 131)

One or two characters may be based on historically obscure acquaintances of Douglas, but others are little more than personifications of facets of their author’s own personality. The voluble Mr. Keith is most likely a spokesman for Douglas’s hedonistic views, and Mr. Eames and Count Caloveglia represent Douglas’s scholarly and antiquarian interests. All are perfectly adequate mouthpieces, but none emerges as rounded or particularly memorable outside of the group.

Several British writers of Greene’s generation were directly influenced by Douglas in general and by South Wind in particular. Aldous Huxley’s satirical novels Crome Yellow (1921, in which Douglas appears as the character Scrogan), Antic Hay (1923), and Point Counter Point (1928) bear its stamp. Greene himself generally wrote books of a darker character, but his lighter comic novel Travels with My Aunt (1969) bears similarities to South Wind. Douglas's erudite yet pleasant style reminds me a bit of Lawrence Durrell. Needless to say this is an engaging novel with plenty of interesting characters that more than offset the lack of a robust plot.

A Voice from the Forecastle

Two Years Before the Mast: 

A Sailor's Life at Sea 

by Richard Henry Dana Jr.

"I determined to go before the mast, where I knew the constant occupation would make reading unnecessary and the hard work, plain diet and life in the open air, away from coal fires, dust and lamplight, would do much to give rest to the nerves of the eye, and would above all make a gradual change in my physical system."  - Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Autobiography




Richard Henry Dana tells the story of his trip, subtitled "A Sailor's Life at Sea", in the brig Pilgrim out of Boston in 1834. Only 19 years old, the Harvard student signed on as a deck hand. For the next two years he experienced a sailor's rugged life, traveling around Cape Horn, visiting Mexico's California territory a full 15 years before it became a U.S. state, and returning home in 1836. The Pilgrim was 'a swearing ship', in which the brutal and choleric Captain Thompson imposed his discipline by bad language, and the Sabbath, normally a kind of token rest day for the crew, was never observed, except by the black African cook reading his bible all day alone in his galley. Apparently Captain Thompson was from the same mold as Herman Wouk's Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny.

The everyday details of his journey are surprisingly vivid. On their first week at sea, they spot a pirate ship, and must outrun it on a moonless night. Dolphins follow the ship as it heads for Cape Horn. The Captain's patience is tried by a lazy first mate who refuses to watch for icebergs. And when a man falls overboard, the captain must assure the crew that a thorough search was conducted. The discipline was brutal and flogging was cruel. The author did not attempt to oppose the Captain, but he did devote much of his subsequent life towards improving the conditions of seamen's lives aboard ship.

What made his story unique was that Dana chose to go "before the mast" and live the life of a real sailor unlike those narratives told by passengers on board ship.  The edition I read included a glossary that was helpful since there were so many terms in the book unique to sailing. I found the book to be an exciting story made interesting by the well-educated young man who chose to go to sea as a shipmate 'before the mast' rather than a cabin passenger in the officers' quarters.

Tahiti and Literature

In the South Seas 

by Robert Louis Stevenson

“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilization, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints.”   ― Robert Louis Stevenson






Tahiti was the setting for Herman Melville’s Omoo, published in 1847. This was the second of Melville’s novels — a sequel to Typee and so a second “Peep at Polynesian Life.” While both of his books were popular, another of my favorite authors also wrote eloquently of his travels including Tahiti. While he had previously travelled with a donkey, Robert Louis Stevenson in 1888 travelled to Tahiti, and after two more voyages settled in the Samoan Islands for the remainder of his life. It was from his time in Tahiti that he was inspired to write some of his most evocative poetry including the following:

Let me fathom out with my arms the length of golden-bred Tahiti
And number one by one the lands of Tautira.
I am seized with fear at Tepari
I shall stop short at Vaita
Clouds are over the sun and it blows a bad wind,
And my home is beyond at Faaroa.
At Vaiumete is a ledge where a man must go with the arms spread.
I must measure with my arms the face of that weary cliff.

Stevenson loved Tahiti and developed a close friendship with a Tahitian named Ori, becoming a "brother" to the Tahitian sub chief (Bell, p 217). While he published three tales about Tahiti his collection of travel essays, In the South Seas, did not include essays on the time he spent in Tahiti. I have always marveled at the various, often famous, adventure novels by Stevenson. My fascination with this author is enhanced by his life story, for as a sickly child, would grow up to travel extensively, often because of his illness. Needless, his wanderlust led in part to the wonderful novels of adventure that we have today.


In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson. Penguin Classics, New York. 1999 (1896)
Dreams of Exile, Robert Louis Stevenson: A Biography by Ian Bell. Henry Holt, New York. 1992

Life and Nature of the Eskimo

Kabloona 
by Gontran de Poncins

"Below us spread a wide land of forest sown with thousands and thousands of shining pools, an unfinished world from which the waters had still to recede, and where you would have said that no man lived. . . We did not drop down from time to time because life suddenly appeared below us, for wherever we looked no life was to be seen.  Yet wherever we stopped, life sprang up as if spontaneously generated by our coming;  and it died again when we rose as if we were carrying off the seed of life." (p 7)

Seldom have I encountered as extraordinary a book as Kabloona. It is a true example of sui generis writing and it is unlikely that anything quite like it will be written again. The author, Gontran de Poncins, spent a year traveling among the Eskimos in the Arctic. This book is the result, distilled from his diaries by Lewis Galantiere. Poncins took the perspective of the Eskimos, and as a result he, Kabloona (the White Man), took seriously what they did. The book is thus a unique combination of travelogue, memoir, and cultural study. It provides the reader with a unique picture into a society that in many ways had changed little since the stone age. It is a society that neither cultivates crops nor domesticates animals; living by the fruit of the sea for food and clothing.  The natural beauty and its essential nature are also explored by Poncins who observed:
"Strangest of all was the absence of color in this landscape.  The world of the North, when it was not brown was grey.  Snow, I discovered, is not white!" (p 56)

While the Eskimos called Poncins Kabloona, sometimes in derision, they proudly called themselves Inuit ("men, preeminently"). 
"I was to green to have any notion of Eskimo values.  Every instinct in me prompted resistance, impelled me to throw these men out [of my igloo], --to do things which would have been stupid  since they would have astonished my Eskimos fully as much as they might have angered them." (p 64)
Poncins eventually embraced their culture and thereby through sharing their lives and learning their culture he began to understand them. This is demonstrated over and over in the book as Poncins tells of his experiences with the Inuit against the background of the harsh nature of the Arctic.
"Everything about the Eskimo astonishes the white man, and everything about the white man is a subject of bewilderment for the Eskimo. Our least gesture seems to him pure madness, and our most casual and insignificant act may have incalculable results for him."

I was most impressed by the description of nature and the land as in this moment from Chapter Four:

"It goes without saying that this tundra is barren of vegetation.  No tree flourishes her, no bush is to be seen, the land is without pasture, without oases;  neither the camel nor the wild ass could survive here where man is able to live.  The Eskimo, preeminently a nomad and sea-hunter, is driven by the need to feed his family from point to point round an irregular circle, and it is the revolution of the seasons that directs his march." (p 77)

Much of what Poncins saw has disappeared over the decades since he visited the Eskimos. Their life, while still relatively unspoiled compared to most other societies is no longer one of a true Stone Age people. They live in shacks and seal oil is giving way to kerosene; even outboard motors may be seen. This remarkable book chronicles an earlier age of a people whose culture was an amazing anomaly in the twentieth century. The result is an exciting cultural and travel adventure told through a very personal narrative voice.

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Poetic and Pictorial Venice

No Vulgar Hotel: 
The Desire and Pursuit of Venice 
by Judith Martin

"This tendency to blather about Venice's beauty, using any excuse to pronounce the beloved name, is a hazard of being a Venetophile.  A greater hazard is holding conversation with a Venetophile.  But what lover ever failed to argue that beauty alone would not have been sufficient to ignite the noble fever?  Venice also has its domestic virtues.  Really."  -  Judith Martin, No Vulgar Hotel, p 27.

Over the years I have travelled a little, mostly for business and seldom for pleasure. Thus I have not travelled to many of the favorite locations for tourists and with books like this one I do not need to do so. Judith Martin (aka "Miss Manners") has travelled to Venice and written about that travel covering the history, aesthetics, and practical aspects of that lovely city by and on the sea.
I especially enjoyed her literary discussions in the sections entitled "Venice with Your Imaginary Friend" and "Venice Depicted". The references include Henry James's The Wings of the Dove, Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, and much more. She also discusses American expatriates including the fabulously wealthy longtime residents, the Curtis family.
I have always enjoyed the classical paintings of the artist known simply as Canaletto and Venice was one of his favorite subjects. But, I was unaware until I read Ms. Martin's book that he "was apt to rearrange buildings as if they were furniture, regularly distorting a view for balance . . ."(p 131) His desire to maintain classical balance in his paintings aside, his depictions of Venice are elegantly beautiful demonstrating his genius and the genius of his age. But there is more. From Browning's poems to Wagner's diaries the literary vision of Venice mirrors the inspiration that its' beauty expresses.  There is also the cinematic Venice of film whether portrayed as romantic comedy in David Lean's Summertime (David Lean is one of my favorite directors and one of the many reasons for this is his ability to capture the essence of foreign locations from London to Moscow to Burma to the Arabia of the hero Lawrence) or in more sinister films like Don't Look Now based on DuMaurier's novel or The Comfort of Strangers adapted by Harold Pinter from Ian McEwen's  novel.
The author clearly loves Venice. Doing so she does not write about it in a sense that expresses the vanguard of sophisticated opinion, for this is not a book that really breaks new ground. However it covers the old ground impeccably. It is a thoroughly delightful read for anyone even remotely interested in Venice.

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A Venetian Phoenix

The City of Falling Angels 
by John Berendt


"…it occasionally felt like walking through a funhouse, especially at times when, twenty minutes after having set out on a course that I had thought was a straight line, I discovered I was right back where I started." - John Berendt


The myth of the Phoenix is famous as a metaphor of rebirth and regeneration. In Venice the opera house La Fenice is appropriately named as it as risen from the ashes more than once over its life of more than two centuries. Most recently it suffered a severe fire in 1996. John Berendt arrived three days after the fire. Intrigued by the rumors circulating among the Venetians as to the source and cause of the conflagration, he decided to stay for a while so he could listen to the stories and, experience the city without its usual herds of tourists. For several years thereafter, he followed the investigation. Was the fire arson, or negligence, or maybe an act of God? Or could there possibly be a more sinister explanation, one involving mafia ties?
It was this event that served as the catalyst for John Berendt's curious book about Venice, The City of Falling Angels. I call it curious because it is not easily categorized as a particular genre. It is certainly non-fiction, but within that broad category it has attributes of a detective story--about the fire that destroyed all but the facade of the opera house; but it also includes aspects of several varieties of history. In addition to the fascinating story of the arson that ultimately led to the convictions of two electricians there are also historical narratives about the specific literary, artistic, architectural, and political events in the history of Venice.
The result is a fascinating book for anyone interested in arcana about Venice or about some of the characters whose stories have become part of the Venice mythos. Both Henry James and Ezra Pound figure importantly in this regard. There are other stories of American ex-patriots like the fabulously wealth Curtis family, and several Venetian clans that are connected with the Fenice.
The stories can be spicy whether they are about the feud over the Ezra Pound papers or the boardroom battle over control of the Save Venice foundation. The battle over who will win the contract to restore the Fenice is yet another episode that combines architectural detail with Italian corporate politics. Ultimately La Fenice was rebuilt in 19th-century style on the basis of a design by architect Aldo Rossi.
The result of these stories is a book that is exceptionally interesting to read even though Venice the magnificent city sometimes fades into the background. Reading about the city that has been slowly sinking into the sea for centuries is ultimately an uplifting experience.

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Antarctic Adventure

The Worst Journey In The World 

by Apsley Cherry-Garrard

"The flowers were of snow, the rivers of ice, and if Stevenson had been to the Antarctic he would have made them so. (p 255)

Who would have guessed that a slight, young, recent Oxford graduate who paid for his passage with Robert Falcon Scott's Antarctic expedition would not only survive the ordeal but also write a classic narrative of his adventure? I might have been surprised had I not recently been reading the biography of young Teddy Roosevelt who overcame early physical weakness and dire diagnoses from his doctors to become a legendary explorer himself (and much more). Apsley Cherry-Garrard (known as "Cherry" on the expedition) narrates a story of the expedition that is both a moving account of their fateful Polar journey and a superb group portrait of Scott and his team.  The physical ordeals that Scott's team endures, the fateful decisions, hardships beyond imagination and ultimately death are portrayed in a penetrating and suspenseful narrative.  One thing that distinguishes Cherry-Garrard's tale are the literary references that inhabit the narrative;  from the chapter epigraphs to his own literary writing style they more than embellish an already taut and exhilarating tale.  I will set this beside another of my favorite Antarctic adventure narrative, Endurance, Alfred Lansing's narrative of Sir Ernest Shackleton's incredible voyage. I recommend the adventure narratives of both Cherry-Garrard and Lansing to all who love great tales of adventure.

The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. The Adventure Library, 1997 (1922).

South Seas Entertainment

The Beach of Falesá 

by Robert Louis Stevenson

The trilogy titled Island Nights' Entertainments is comprised of three stories set in the South Seas. The longest of these is The Beach of Falesá. In it the author, Robert Louis Stevenson, describes a setting that is “paradise-on-the-surface-only,” a fact that comes out right in the opening paragraph of the novella:
"I saw that island first when it was neither night nor morning. The moon was to the west, setting, but still broad and bright. To the east, and right amidships of the dawn, which was all pink, the daystar sparkled like a diamond. The land breeze blew in our faces, and smelt strong of wild lime and vanilla: other things besides, but these were the most plain; and the chill of it set me sneezing. I should say I had been for years on a low island near the line, living for the most part solitary among natives. Here was fresh experience; even the tongue would be quite strange to me; and the look of these woods and mountains, and the rare smell of them, renewed my blood."
Most of Stevenson's novels have no women or merely cardboard cutout caricatures of such, but this novella is different. There is a gal named Uma who, though she can neither read nor write, can still tell the birds from the bees. Her adventures with a white trader make this short novel an entertaining read. Also notable is the charming and intimate realism, based on Stevenson's frequent travels in the South Pacific that, over time, had grown into a love that permeates this novella.

The Beach of Falesa by Robert Louis Stevenson. Heritage Press, 1956 (1892)

Traveler and Writer Extraordinaire

Utz 

by Bruce Chatwin

"...In his view, the true heroes of this impossible situation were the people who wouldn't raise a murmur against the Party or State - yet who seemed to carry the sum of Western Civilization in their heads. 'With their silence...they inflict a final insult on the State, by pretending it does not exist."' p. 15

 Bruce Chatwin died on this day in 1989, aged forty-eight. However suspect Chatwin’s travel books may be as guides or historical records, they continue to be praised as writing. Chatwin's novel On the Black Hill won the 1982 James Tait Black Memorial Prize; however my favorite of all his works is Utz, a beautiful little novel I first read in a local book group.  
It was then that I first became enamored with the writing of Bruce Chatwin.  More recently Utz was included in a class I took at University of Chicago on the literature of Prague.  Fundamentally it is the story of Kaspar Utz, who lives in Prague and who is consumed by collecting figurines and living a quiet life under the communist system. Utz is painted as a prisoner to his dolls while he lives under a totalitarian regime, so when he leaves on his annual sabbatical to Vichy in France, he finds capitalist life not to his liking, even though he has an alleged fortune in Swiss banks enabling him to enjoy a nice standard of living abroad, he misses his figurines and wants to return back home.
But really, that isn’t him, he was a state collaborator acting on small tasks when he was abroad and he enjoyed living under the Soviet system as he was comfortable with his life there. This is highlighted by the way he keeps his figurines so that only he can enjoy them, not the state, and that in an era where drabness is the norm, he can stand out from the crowd and lure partners with his goods brought overseas and obtained locally on the black market. Chatwin creates a unique and believable world in this small jewel of a story.


Chatwin was especially noted for his travel writing and his many friendships and acquaintances in the literary and art worlds.  The following is from “Mrs. Mandelstam,” Chatwin’s account of his visit with the widow of the Russian poet, Osip Mandelstam, collected in What Am I Doing Here?, the last book he published before he died:
  "White metal fastenings glittered among the brown stumps of her teeth. A cigarette stuck to her lower lip. Her nose was a weapon. You knew for certain she was one of the most powerful women in the world, and knew she knew it…. She waved me to a chair and, as she waved, one of her breasts tumbled out of her nightie. "Tell me," she shoved it back, "are there any grand poets left in your country?"


Utz by Bruce Chatwin. Penguin Books. 1989 (1988)

The Spirit of Man

Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"Once again I had found myself in the presence of a truth and had failed to recognize it.  Consider what had happened to me: I had thought myself lost, had touched the very bottom of despair; and then, when the spirit of renunciation had filled me, I had known peace.  I know now what I was not conscious of at the time--that in such an hour a man feels that he has finally found himself and has become his own friend.  An essential inner need has been satisfied, and against that satisfaction, that self-fulfillment, no external power can prevail."(p 170)


Antoine de Saint-Exupery was a man of action who seemed to have half a dozen different careers at once: he was a prize-winning novelist and professional mail pilot, an airborne adventurer and a war correspondent, a commercial test pilot and the author of a popular children's book. But whatever else he was doing, he never stopped writing. In this memoir he describes his experiences as a pilot in terms so poetic as to take your breath away. Few pilots perhaps have seen a cloud and thought of it as "a scarf of filings scraped off the surface of the earth and borne out to sea by the wind." The opening chapters form a sort of philosophical meditation on the nature of the life as a pilot as can be gleaned from the chapter titles: "The Craft", "The Men", "The Tool". There are moments and vignettes described as only someone who lived the life and imagined the experience could achieve.


Published on the eve of World War II, the book sold out quickly on both sides of the ocean, although the form baffled readers in each language. Three months after publication, the Academie Francaise awarded it the Grand Prix du Roman, naming it the best novel of 1939. American booksellers, for their part, chose Wind, Sand and Stars as "the best non-fiction book of the year." However you classify it this book is Saint-Exupery's paean to the spirit of man, to the goals that unite us, and to the optimism that was his stock in trade. Whether you agree with him or not, the book remains one that buoys the spirit and calms the heart.


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Literate Traveler

Patrick Leigh Fermor

My spirits, already high, steadily rose as  I walked.  I could scarcely believe that I was really there; alone, that is , on the move, advancing into Europe, surrounded by all this emptiness and change, with a thousand wonders waiting." (A Time of Gifts, p 23)

PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR, who died last week at age 96 at his home in England, was one of the great travel writers of the twentieth century.  I knew of him from his two great travel books, A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water.  But there was more to the man than these books. 
Robert Kaplan, writing in the New York Times, commented that,
"At first glance, Fermor seems a throwback to the age of derring-do imperialists like T. E. Lawrence. But he did not simply glorify king and country; rather,  he combined the traits of a soldier, linguist and humanist, and he appreciated history and culture for their own sake even as he used that wisdom to defend civilization. In today’s world of overly specialized foreign-policy knowledge, in which military men, politicians and academics inhabit disconnected intellectual universes, we need more generalists like Fermor."
This speaks to the larger achievements of the man beyond literature.  Yet, for many, it was through literature that Patrick Leigh Fermor became a friend and beloved author.  The London Telegraph expressed these thoughts in their obituary,
"His most celebrated book told the story of his year-long walk across Europe from Rotterdam to Istanbul in 1934, when he was 18 and the Continent was on the verge of cataclysmic change. His account of his adventures was projected as a trilogy, of which only the first two parts have so far been published, A Time of Gifts in 1977 and Between the Woods and the Water nine years later.
The journey was a cultural awakening for Leigh Fermor that bred in him a love of language and of remote places and set the pattern for his future life."
This is the author that I encountered when reading these two books.  It was his charm and learning that became immediately evident through his ability to sketch a landscape, limn a portrait, and through his way with words bring the past to life.  His encounters with individuals were vivid as he traveled through the heart of Europe, up the Rhine, down the Danube and beyond into the past of a countries that were once part of the most powerful Empire in the west.  In the second volume he delved deeper into the former Hungarian empire and depicted the impressive plains and forests as well as the great Hungarian novelists like Banffy and von Rezzori.  I look forward to reading further in the works of Patrick Leigh Fermor and salute his achievements.


A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor. New York Review Book Classics, 2005 (1977)
Between the Woods and the Water by Patrick Leigh Fermor. New York Review Book Classics, 2005 (1986)

Memoir of Voices

Satyr Square: A Year, a Life 

in Rome 

by Leonard Barkan

"Poets' voices. I had come to feel, were too easy to hear, which, oddly enough, meant that their voices were being drowned out by too many professors -- my colleagues -- speaking on their behalf. I came to Rome to hear voices hoarse from much longer silence, the voices of material objects, statues of marble and bronze that had lived the public and private life of ancient Rome," (pp 35-36)


This is a memoir of voices, both that of the author and that of the antiquities and that of the  Renaissance as well as writers and poets, like Shakespeare. All the voices come together to form the story of a year spent in Rome. But there are also the tastes, for this is as much a culinary journey as an aesthetic travelogue. The combination may prove too much for some readers, but I was at home with the lonely man, Leonard Barkan, at the center and his voices and tastes and experiences were seldom less than interesting. His passions suggested new ideas and thinkers to me and presented his take on those with whom I was already acquainted. All of this within a travelogue with fragments of Italy presented -- fragments and images of places that I enjoyed having shared the author's erudite and humorous views from his year in Rome.


Satyr Square by Leonard Barkan. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York. 2006


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Travels with Herodotus 

by Ryszard Kapuściński

"Herodotus is by turns surprised, astounded, delighted, terrified by things. To some he simply gives no credence, knowing how easily people can be carried away by fantasy."(p 182)


This was my introduction to the world of Ryszard Kapuscinski. And what an introduction. I was impressed and intrigued with his fine writing style and the way that he was able to interpolate his companion, The Histories of Herodotus, with his youthful travels in India, China, and beyond. Having read Herodotus' work fairly recently this was even more a delight as I marveled at the interpretations Kapuscinski shares with the reader as he travels the world. He comes full circle back to the Mediterranean Sea that was central to Herodotus and the Greeks. Ending with a visit to Halicarnassus where Herodotus was born he bridges the time that has passed since that day with a meditation on the meaning of history. I subsequently read his The Shadow of the Sun and look forward to other of Kapuscinski's books.


Travels With Herodotus by Ryszard Kapucinski. Klara Glowczewska, trans. Alfred A. Knopf, 2007 (2004)


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Obeying Neptune's Laws

Sailing Alone Around the World
by Joshua Slocum

To succeed, however, in anything at all, one should go understandingly about his work and be prepared for every emergency. I see, as I look back over my own small achievement, a kit of not too elaborate carpenters' tools, a tin clock, and some carpet-tacks, not a great many, to facilitate the enterprise . . . I studied with diligence Neptune's laws, and these laws I tried to obey when I sailed overseas; it was worth the while.(p 234)

More than one hundred years ago at the end of the century prior to the last a fifty-one year old man set sail for a trip around the world.  Joshua Slocum capped his sea-going career with this trip in a sail boat, named The Spray, that he built himself and, upon his return, he memorialized his trip by writing the narrative of his trip, Sailing Alone around the World.  His career had waned with the gradual demise of large sail-going ships and he put all of his years of experience on them, plus some help from friends and strangers along the way, into this voyage.  The story he told about it still has power to grip the reader's imagination yet today.

Many incidents are shared as he travels from place to place and is in and out of danger on several occasions, mostly due to the vagaries of mother nature.  Some of those incidents were survived mainly through his own good luck in combination with his sailing experience, for it is clear that nature is more powerful than any sailing vessel, surely one so small as his single manned craft.  Early on in his voyage he is chased by pirates, but eludes them and goes on to enjoy the hospitality of the British at Gibraltar.  Their would be more hospitality that he would experience during his long three year trip and there would be a deadly encounter with a native, but no more pirates.  I was impressed with his devotion to reading which he kept up both with books that he took with him and books that he obtained along the way.   This was undoubtedly a life-long habit and it must have been helpful as he sat down to narrate his travels upon his return.  I also marveled at the ebb and flow of time as the journey seemed to go more swiftly than one would expect a span of three years to unfold.  There was one theme that grew over the course of the story, Joshua was not alone after all.  His sailing ship, The Spray, had become much more than a mere container bobbing on the waves.  No, it had become his close companion whose heart and soul was one with Joshua - a wonderful occurrence that only seafarers and readers could appreciate.  At the conclusion of the book I had admiration for this humble man who took on a challenge that would defeat most men much younger than his fifty-one years and who succeeded. 

If the Spray discovered no continents on her voyage, it may be that there were no more continents to be discovered; she did not seek new worlds, or sail to powwow about the dangers of the seas. The sea has been much maligned. To find one's way to lands already discovered is a good thing (p 234)

Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum. The Adventure Library. 1995 (1900)

Marco Polo

"Marco Polo, a wise and learned citizen of Venice, who states distinctly what things he saw and what things he heard from others."

- Travels of Marco Polo, Book One

The Travels of Marco Polo is the usual English title of Marco Polo's travel book, nicknamed Il Milione (The Million) or Le Livre des Merveilles (The Book of Wonders). The book is a description of his travels and stays in the Orient, including Asia, Persia, China and Indonesia, between 1271 and 1298 is also known as Oriente Poliano or Description of the World. It was a very famous and popular book in the 13th century and has remained in print to this day. The text claims that Marco Polo became an important figure at the court of the Mongol leader Kublai Khan. However, modern scholars debate how much of the account is accurate and whether or not Marco Polo ever actually traveled to the court or was just repeating stories that he had heard from other travellers. The book was actually written in French by a romance author of the time, Rustichello da Pisa, who was reportedly working from accounts which he had heard from Marco Polo when they were in prison in Genoa having been captured while on a ship.

The title Il Milione comes from the Polo family's use of the name Emilione to distinguish themselves from the numerous other Venician families bearing the name Polo. Modern assessments of the text usually consider it to be the record of an observant rather than imaginative or analytical traveler. Polo emerges as being curious and tolerant, and devoted to Kublai Khan and the dynasty that he served for two decades. The book is Polo's account of his travels to China which he calls Cathay (north China) and Manji (south China). The Polo party left Venice in 1271. They left China in late 1290 or early 1291 and were back in Venice in 1292. The tradition is that Polo dictated the book to a romance writer, Rustichello da Pisa, while in prison in Genoa between 1298–1299; Rustichello may have worked up his first Franco-Italian version from Marco's notes.

The Travels is divided into four books. Book One describes the lands of the Middle East and Central Asia that Marco encountered on his way to China. Book Two describes China and the court of Kublai KhanKublai Khan. Book Three describes some of the coastal regions of the East: Japan, India, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, and the east coast of Africa. Finally, Book Four describes some of the recent wars among the Mongols and some of the regions of the far north, like Russia.*

The edition that I own and have read beginning when I was in high school was published in 1948 by Doubleday & Company. It is the version originally translated & edited by William Marsden and re-edited by Thomas Wright. In this version Books Three and Four are combined into a Book Three that includes the sections included in Book Four (above). This is an exciting tale of Polo's travels, and no matter how historically inaccurate it may be it provides a window into the Orient during an era that Europe was just beginning to awake from the slumber of the "Dark ages".


The Travels of Marco Polo The Venetian trans. by William Marsden. Thomas Wright, editor. Doubleday & Company. 1948.
*source: Wikipedia

Books on the Bus

I always have a book with me including when I ride the bus.
When I am out and about I prefer to leave the heavyweight tomes at home so among my current reading Infinite Jest: a Novel by David Foster Wallace (heavyweight in more than mere pounds), Paris 1919: Six months that changed the World by Margaret MacMillan and Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin are left at home next to my comfortable reading chair.
Last night I was reading Out Stealing Horses: a Novel by Per Petterson while riding down to Old Town to meet a friend for dinner and today as I rode downtown and back to meet some former coworkers at Ceres I took along Gene Smith's slight but fascinating biography of Woodrow Wilson's last years, When The Cheering Stopped: The Last Years of Woodrow Wilson (highly recommended). Now what these two disparate books have in common is that they are both lightweight and easy to carry. They also may be read with a little less concentration than that required for Wallace's tome.

While I enjoy reading I equally enjoy noticing what my fellow bus riders are reading and there are always a few readers on board any bus with more than a handful of passengers. Call me a biblio-voyeur if you will, but I cannot deny my interest. Usually the books are not worth the glance, for the buses are filled with people reading Twilight or its clones, the latest romance novel or some Ludlumesque thriller-chiller (all of which I personally find unreadable - but that's just one reader's perspective).
Today, on the other hand, while returning home from lunch I saw someone standing near me (it was early on Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend and the bus was a bit more crowded than usual) reading Knowles' A Separate Peace ; and another sitting in front of me reading Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande. Now those are both books worthy of consideration, in fact I've read A Separate Peace and have the Gawande book on my "to read" list, although I'm not sure when I'll be able to get to it. These books provide evidence that there is a bit of gold among the dross of most books being read on the bus. It reminds me of the time several years ago that I struck up a conversation with someone who was reading No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin. I had recently read it myself and could not help sharing the joy of the experience by discussing the book with a fellow reader - no stranger, for we were connected by our shared reading. While that was an exception, I usually have my nose buried in a book - my own. There is nothing like taking books with you and reading them on buses; enjoying them while traveling to and fro.

The Colossus of Maroussi


In Greece one has the conviction that genius is the norm, not mediocrity. No country has produced, in proportion to its numbers, as many geniuses as Greece. In one century alone this tiny nation gave to the world almost five hundred men of genius. Her art, which goes back fifty centuries, is eternal and incomparable. . . The Greek cosmos is the most eloquent illustration of the unity of thought and deed. It persists even to-day, though its elements have long since been dispersed. The image of Greece, faded though it may be, endures as the archetype for the miracle wrought by the human spirit.

- The Colossus of Maroussi, Henry Miller, pp 83-4.

The Colossus of Maroussi is a literary memoir about Greece. More than that it is a paean to the idea of Greece as Henry Miller shares some of his life and love of that land and its meaning for him. The incandescent spirit of Miller and Greece is on every page and the joy that creates cannot help but permeate the reader's soul. Miller's descriptive powers are immense and he evokes beautiful sunlit mornings and evenings on the Aegean with ease. For those who already know Greece from the classics it is a reaffirmation of the meaning of the people and their land; for those who do not already know Greece it is an awakening of the spirit. With literary references and reverential treatment of the gods and demigods present everywhere this book takes you on a journey that you do not want to see end. Ever since I read his The Tropic of Cancer I have loved Miller's work. This memoir provides another reason to embrace his literary world.


The Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller. New Directions, New York. 1958 (1941)

Travel Notes

West for the Holiday


I do not enjoy travel, but do love to visit my sister, Robbie, who lives in northeastern Nevada. So last month I booked a trip to visit her for the Christmas holiday.
Having just returned I can report that it was among the best of my many visits with her (and her husband Ed and their menagerie - currently including three dogs and two cats). We spent a quiet week with snow falling outside most days but a fire in the wood stove in the evening kept the house warm overnight. Her place is in a high valley just west of the Ruby mountains with a beautiful vista of snow-capped peaks that range from the south to north just outside the broad living-dining room windows. We had a white Christmas with snowfall much of the day, not unexpected for when spending the holiday in the mountains of Nevada.
I cannot help but mention the wonderful meals I enjoyed sharing with Robbie and Ed due to both the skill and love which my sister puts into her cooking and baking. The result was fresh bread and muffins with alternate meals of savory meat, fish and vegetarian dishes. The best of these during my visit had to be the corn chowder and a delightful chicken and farfel pasta dish with pesto sauce. Only someone with the talent of a writer like M. F. K. Fisher could truly do justice to my sister's cooking with appropriate literary descriptions.
Travel may not be one of my interests, but visits to see my sister are among the best things in my life.