My favourite read of 2023. A chance find. Once I had started reading, everything else was put on hold. I don't know where to start. There is so much tMy favourite read of 2023. A chance find. Once I had started reading, everything else was put on hold. I don't know where to start. There is so much to talk about. Frederick Forsyth never intended to be a writer at all. He wanted to travel and see the world. Became a journalist. Then a foreign correspondent for Reuters, then for the BBC in Africa. Back in London out of a job and flat broke, in a friend's flat in January 1970 on his portable typewriter, wrote The Day of the Jackal in thirty-five days. Published the next year, and two years later made into a film....more
Willy and the hand shift. The road is long, the book is trim. Short and sweet, the generation Beat. The karma of the Dharma.
LEW "Cadillacs are always iWilly and the hand shift. The road is long, the book is trim. Short and sweet, the generation Beat. The karma of the Dharma.
LEW "Cadillacs are always in a hurry Call it a watchpocket book Look at these buildings What are they DOING here This arroyo & that sand I last saw Amarillo as a soldier smoking my first cigar & Roosevelt died
Roosevelt had a dirty asshole so we had Pearl Harbor Hitler had a dirty ass so we had Buchenwald Senator McCarthy had a dirty asshole & he died Not one cowboy in Texas has a clean asshole But there is one in Las Vegas Alexander Pope had a dirty asshole T S Eliot prays for the dirty asshole T S Eliot's fog had a dirty asshole The last time I saw Paris I had a dirty asshole Pres Eisenhower plays golf with a dirty asshole No insult intended to his partner"
There are several pages scribed over hundreds of miles on the trip across America
I read a Pan Books 1986 edition, (without an Introduction by another writer,) just a Preface by Maugham. This account of Maugham's travels in the lateI read a Pan Books 1986 edition, (without an Introduction by another writer,) just a Preface by Maugham. This account of Maugham's travels in the late 1920s is a valuable record of the place and time. All material for future novels. This is a good document detailing Maugham's travels, a rich source of experience to draw on. The book covers Maugham's travels between Rangoon in Burma, and Haiphong in Annam by various means of transport. Rangoon, now known as Yangon, Burma now Myanmar. Haiphong is still Haiphong, Annam was a French protectorate encompassing Central Vietnam. Before the protectorate's establishment, the name Annam was used in the West to refer to Vietnam as a whole, the Vietnamese people were referred to as Annamites.
There are many episodes worth covering here, but one will suffice. 'While riding a mule through the country in caravan - 'I could not put two thoughts together. I resigned myself at least for that day to make no attempt at serious meditation and instead, to pass the time, invented Blenkinsop.' About an invented author of no talent, writing a book quite unreadably boring but of purity and purpose became a best seller that nobody read. 'There can be nothing so gratifying to an author as to arouse the respect and esteem of the reader. Make him laugh and he think you a trivial fellow, but bore him in the right way and your reputation is assured.'...more
24 Feb. 2020. Review as I go, by chapter as this is a big read, both deep in page and subjects covered. 513 pages. Originally published under the title24 Feb. 2020. Review as I go, by chapter as this is a big read, both deep in page and subjects covered. 513 pages. Originally published under the title Le Longue Marche in 1957. First published in English in 1958. From the back cover synopsis: 'Written in the 1950s, it attacks the "bourgeois democracies" which wanted to keep the People's Republic a pariah state. And there is much emphasis on the subjects which the author holds most dear - birth control, female emancipation and the great educational programmes which were forced on the Chinese peasantry. But the best books are written in sympathy. De Beauvoir helps us to understand Communist China.' Roy Hattersley
Contents Preliminaries 1. The Discovery of Peking 2. The Peasants 3. The Family 4. Industry 5. Culture 6. The Defensive Effort 7. The First of October 8. Cities of China Conclusions and Index
Preliminaries September 1955 The book opens with De Beauvoir in a plane over the Gobi Desert flying east with eight other passengers. 'the last three were on their way to China as guests of the government. At Bandung Chou En-lai had made the invitation good not only for the Conference nations but extended to include every country in the world: "Come and see." Not a little surprised at it and at our own selves, we were taking advantage of the offer.' 'Ancient China did not interest me much. For me, China was this patient epic that starts in the dark days of (Malraux's) Man's Fate and ends on the First of October, 1949, in an apotheosis on the Tien An Men; China, for me was this stirring and reasonable revolution which had not only delivered peasants and workers from exploitation, but had rid an entire land of the foreigner.'
'I was sure ahead of time that China would not resemble any of the countries which are solidly anchored in capitalism. I also suspected that China would differ from those where socialism has already triumphed.'
'When you travel by air, appearances are abrupt.' This statement by de Beauvoir reminds us this is the 1950s.
'In Paris I had seen the Peking Opera: I now imagined glittering traditions blending with the innovations of an effervescent present. "This land, both completely new and infinitely old" - the slogan engengered other seductive syntheses; I had anticipated China, at once orderly and fantastic, where poverty had the mildness of abundance, enjoys a freedom unknown in other Eastern places.'
'Six weeks later I crossed the Gobi again, in the opposite direction. It lay golden under a bright sun; snow-capped mountains glistened off in the distance. China had changed. Black, gray, rose, these were not suitable any more, no symbolic colour would do: China had become a reality. The seeming richness of images translates their radical poverty: the true China had infinitely exceeded the concepts and the words with which I had tried to visualize and foregauge it. China was no longer an idea; it had assumed flesh and bone. It is that incarnation I am going to tell you about.'...more
'Kapuściński does not believe in objectivity. Formal objectivity in conflict situations can even result in disinformation. The greatest reporters, suc'Kapuściński does not believe in objectivity. Formal objectivity in conflict situations can even result in disinformation. The greatest reporters, such as Orwell or García Márquez, always practiced 'journalism with intent', which 'fights for a cause'. To the end of his life he never changed his mind about this!'...more
