Controversy Isn’t What It Used to Be

I’ve recently read a book that, in its day, and despite an utter lack of social media on which people could vent their anguished outrage, sparked a firestorm seldom seen in the literary world.  Lady Chatterley’s Lover, probably D.H. Lawrence’s most famous work, sparked obscenity trials and bannings across the globe, and on every continent.

As you can probably imagine, I approached this controversial book with a lot of curiosity: what kind of naughty, explicit, sticky and uncomfortable prose would cause such a stir.  Making it more interesting, the book was published in 1928… in the middle of the Roaring Twenties, an era described by our experts as the greatest epoch of partying ever.

So, how was it?

From a literary and sociological point of view, it was a great book which probably deserves its current status as a classic in its own right which just happened to get off to a rocky start.  Lawrence was a good writer whose characters are motivated by realistic forces and who struggle against class restrictions that, though they no longer exist, are easily relatable by the reader.  In fact, this, not the sex, is the focus of the novel: Lady Chatterley’s “bit of rough” as Mellors is described in the book’s introduction is, you can tell, an object of sneers and knowing looks.  That sets a brilliant tone, and will likely be the book’s enduring legacy.

The supposed obscenity, on the other hand, is essentially a non-issue today.  Yes, there is sex, explicitly described, in this book, but it isn’t remotely erotic sex.  Mechanically described, and with only the kind of overwrought and unrealistic wording one might find in the words of a pre-Raphaelite poem it’s the weakest part of the book.  The prose style there was more suitable, perhaps, to a medical journal.

That isn’t to say that the sex scenes aren’t important.  They are.  Editions in which the sex have been omitted are worthless, because of the supreme importance that they have in the character’s development, and because Lady Chatterley’s actions during and reactions to sex are paramount to the story.

So what happened?  I think it’s a conjunction of two things.  The first is that Lawrence knew he was breaking all the taboos when he wrote this.  One thing is to poke a socialist finger into the holes in the unraveling British class system… quite another to talk openly about intercourse in the way of the lower classes.  Lawrence knew it perfectly well.

The second, and the impression I get when reading, is that Lawrence himself had a complicated relationship to both women and sexuality.  I might be wrong on that score, but it’s certainly the sense a modern reader has when laboring through his descriptions of what is supposed to be illicit pleasure.  Of course, compared to his contemporaries, Lawrence was a regular Hugh Hefner, so maybe that is just a modern impression.

Nevertheless, it’s the lasting impression I left with.  As a writer, I’ll write erotica if either the market or the story calls for it.  The main thing one strives for is that the sex actually be sexy, provocative and, if possible, titillating.  One can fail spectacularly, of course, but that is the aim.  If your readers are reading one-handed, you’ve succeeded.

Lawrence either wasn’t aiming for this, or simply missed his mark.

 

Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine writer whose popular novel, Siege, has no sex in it (but people liked it anyway).  If you’re curious to see what he does when sex is involved, please check out Sinisterotica, an anthology that contains his story “Top of the Food Chain” and has one of the greatest covers ever created (and do you imagine the stir that one would have caused in Britain in 1928?).

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A Trip I’d Take in a Heartbeat

Imagine the following: you hop on a local train in Boston and, a few weeks later, hop off a train in Patagonia.  It sounds like the trip of a lifetime, doesn’t it?

Well, it kinda is, except for the fact that it isn’t, technically, possible; not only is the Darien Gap still alive and well, but there are other spots where the train system is disconnected in the middle of the journey.  That, of course, didn’t stop Paul Theroux from getting as close as possible in 1979.

Now, I don’t normally read travel books of any kind (though we do sometimes have travel writers here), but I’d read Theroux’s The Mosquito Coast in high school (it wasn’t assigned reading, but I used to sit in the back row and I had a locker just behind me.  Another class was reading this, and I was bored in class, so I read it while my classmates were slowly discussing Shakespeare plays that I’d already finished reading), so I decided to give this one a shot.  Plus, I got the book for free…

The Old Patagonian Express tells the story of an adventure which, even in the limited form that Theroux attempted, is no longer possible.  The final legs of the train journey, within Argentina, no longer exist (they may, again, someday – the missing link has recently reopened for cargo trains… here’s hoping passenger service will resume someday).

It also tells the story from a point of view that is almost forty years old.  Yes, I know that most Americans are still just as provincial in their outlook today as they were in 1979, but now the WAY they are provincial has swapped around.  Today, an American traveler might be surprised that countries on the other side of their border are not as politically correct and don’t really care for American’s sensibilities…

But in 1979 it was very different.  Theroux might have been a world traveler and an enlightened exponent of his age, but he still looks at the people in Latin America without romanticizing them, and generalizes about their habits and activities in a way that would cause shock and outrage if published today.

The net effect of this is… refreshing and likely more accurate.  Much of what he says isn’t exactly gentle and “nice”, but it is supremely accurate.  Someone using this as a field guide for Latin American countries might find that a lot has changed, but might still find a more realistic description of the people one will encounter along the way than if you look at a modern equivalent.  Seems that modern authors will never let you know when a certain town in Costa Rica is populated almost exclusively by people who hate tourists and look to rob them whenever possible.

Now, the question is: is accuracy a sacrifice that it’s reasonable to make in the name of cultural sensitivity?  When does political correctness cross the line from a necessary buffer to avoid prejudice to outright lying in order to soften a hard truth.

I don’t have the answer to that, but I recommend reading this book if you’re interested in the question.  It will make you think, and possibly to question.

And besides, it tells about a fascinating adventure which, in itself is more than enough to justify the purchase price.  Also, we like trains.

Definitely one to read if you can.

 

Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine writer whose most popular novel, Siege, is available here.

 

 

Advancing the Middle-Earth Story

I’ve been reading the History of Middle-Earth series for a few years now – and have recently read The War of the Ring.  As I mentioned before, it’s a fascinating look into the thinking and process that went into the most influential modern fantasy work.

Today, everyone in the fantasy genre is defined by Tolkien.  Most obvious are books like the Wheel of Time or the Shannara series which in greater or lesser measure build on the Tolkien formula (the Brooks books do so more transparently, but almost every quest-based, journey-of-the-hero fantasy series does so in greater or lesser measure).

The rest of the genre, of course, is desperately trying to break away from the Tolkien tradition.  They hate high fantasy with a passion, either for silly “political” reasons (it is western-based and non-inclusive) or for more understandable artistic reasons; when a writer says they dislike the subgenre because the characters, far from acting like real people, fit into the roles that legend assigns them, makes a valid point.  But even those who break with the tradition do so self-consciously, always trying to define the exact limits of the shadow of the colossus they’re trying to escape.

And for people outside the genre, fantasy is essentially synonymous with Tolkien.

Yeah, I think understanding what went into creating this giant is worthwhile.  But more than just an academic pursuit for writers, it’s also a fascinating one.

As I mentioned earlier, the true, grinding world-building went into the Silmarillion.  This project was Tolkien’s passion, a labor of love that he knew would likely never see the light of day.  Dismayed as he was by the lack of an English mythology (Romans and 1066 saw to its destruction), he set out to create one from scratch.

From short texts and poems set in this mythology grew the story and world that we love today… but it grew in layers that would make an onion feel inadequate.  A lot of the fun of the History of ME books comes precisely from reading Christopher Tolkien’s descriptions of the scraps of paper his father used to compose the original drafts.  One comes to have a great admiration for the editor’s work in this case.  Actually it became the world we met in The Silmarillion.

So when he decided to write a children’s book, The Hobbit, he simply (what a deceptive word, that “simply”) layered it over what he’d already spent decades building.

And LotR built on that, another layer to the cake.

This particular installment deals with the destruction of Isengard, and comes, as should be evident, at a time when many of the bones of the mythology were already in place.  It is in near-final form, and reads very smoothly, unlike some of the early texts which were intentionally written in an archaic style.  As always, the true fanatics will love mining the text for differences with the final version while less-obsessed readers will enjoy revisiting the world and reading about how Tolkien built his masterpiece, as revealed by Christopher.

I can’t really recommend this series to everyone, of course.  But I will happily do so to writers who enjoy a window into another writer’s craft and also to OCD fanatics.  It is an effort, but it does have its rewards.

 

Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine novelist.  His novel The Malakiad, far from trying to escape Tolkien’s shadow, would likely make Tolkien attempt to disavow the fantasy genre.  Also, it’s a very funny book.  You can check it out here.

Art History for Traditionalists

I have no formal education in art, and my knowledge of Art History boils down to what I’ve gleaned over years of visiting museums, watching documentaries and taking free online Art History courses.

One of the interesting things I’ve noticed about the online courses is that they focus a huge percentage of their resources to teaching us about art that, to put it delicately, is not the kind of art people queue up to see.  So we get to learn about modern Caribbean art, feminist political art or the art of under-appreciated Latin American communists.

Meanwhile, in the real world, anyone who’s wandered the Louvre knows that it consists of huge, empty halls where you can spend hours admiring some of the lesser-known pieces (the last time I was there, a marvelous exhibition of traditional African art was on display…  I spent forty minutes there, and saw only four other people… on a Saturday) while a chainsaw is required to cut through the crowds to view old Leo’s Gioconda – which is reached from a corridor full of Italian renaissance masters which is almost as crowded as the Mona Lisa room.

Clearly, modern academia, as usual, seems to have lost touch with what’s important and is focusing on its political preoccupations.  Nothing new there, nothing particularly objectionable, either–we all know that academics are not tastemakers, they just record what they think is important during their own little slice of time while wearing blinders–but it does put us in a quandary: what to do if one desires an overview of Art History without wasting time on nonessentials?

An easy answer appears to be to pick up any Art History book from before the dawn of political correctness.  Those will focus on Western art and ignore everything else except for those traditions that fed directly into the canon.

But those books have a problem.  They can be stuffy as hell.  What is the layman who wishes to become an educated layman to do?

Four words: Hendrick Willem Van Loon.  As the name implies (can we call it an implication if it’s such a dead giveaway?  Let’s) he is a Dutchman, who, for professional purposes was based in the US.  He led an interesting life (banned from entering Germany by the Nazis, for example), but most importantly for our purposes, he wrote a book entitled, quite simply, The Arts.

My own copy, of course, does not have the dust jacket and is the 1946 edition (the book is from 1937), which I bought at the jamboree at my local anglican church (a veritable cornucopia of unexpected books) for a small price.

It was worth every penny.  Van Loon is what, today, we’d call a popular historian, and he makes the history of art both accessible and interesting.  He doesn’t just tell us about the works, but goes into the society around the artist and into the artist’s foibles deeply enough to give us an idea of why things were produced.

Better still, the book is heavily illustrated, by Van Loon himself, mostly.  So, despite there being zero photographs of paintings, the book never becomes a dull read.  I found myself intrigued by his descriptions and googling artwork continuously as I read, a luxury the original readers didn’t have, which makes this book even better for today than it was for its own age.

The volume doesn’t limit itself to the more traditional study of painting, sculpture and architecture, but also includes quite a number of chapters on music, which was both a surprise and a treat.  Van Loon clearly felt very strongly that music, in addition to those other forms of expression was central to cultural life.

As far as I’ve been able to tell, this book hasn’t been reprinted since 1974.  That’s not surprising.  Entire art movements have sprung up in hope and died in obscurity (with a few exceptions) since it was written.  Newer thinking has superseded it.  But that newer thinking was precisely what brought us to this book in the first place, by a commodius vicus of recirculation, as it were.  We don’t want the newer thinking.

What we want is to see the art that has given countless generations past and present pleasure with more education.  If you truly want to catch up on significant posterior trends, you could always complement the Van Loon with this volume.  We wouldn’t necessarily recommend it, but you could.

But the Van Loon will do more to teach you about art people actually care about than any Art History course I know of for the same price.

 

Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine novelist and short story writer.  The title story of his collection Virtuoso is about an artist, which means that he has to read up sometimes.  You can buy the collection here.

The Golden Years of the Big Apple

I probably should have bundled this review together with my post about the Venetian Empire because today’s book was also written by the indomitable Jan Morris.  The reason I didn’t is twofold: first off, I want to keep the posts about Italy separate from other things because the whole Italian-reading period in my life coincided with the writing of a novel.  The second reason is that I forgot that today’s book was next in the queue.

 

The book in question is Manhattan ’45, and, like the Venetian book, the one I read was a Folio Society edition, one that, with the day-glo pink highlights and evocative period photographs was ver inviting to read from a visual standpoint.  The prose, as seems to be the norm when it comes to Morris is also welcoming and colloquial – Morris is clearly a popular writer as opposed to a stuffy historian.

Equally clear is the affection that Morris has for this particular subject.  WWII was ending, the world could move on to other things… and it was a time of joy and expectation in the densely packed metropolis.  One could quite easily have thought that New York was the center of the world immediately after the war, and one would quite likely have been right.  It’s a great subject to write about, if a slightly obvious one.  Still, Morris got there first, so everyone else will always be the imitators.

It’s a great book to learn about the city as it was precisely at that time… and perhaps therein lies its weakness.  Though charming, the snapshot of a city, no matter how quirky, isn’t memorable in the way the hundreds-of-years-long exploits of an empire and its charismatic leaders can be.  This one is a book to dip into when you want to be transported elsewhere, but not one that you’ll remember details of later.  It’s like looking at pictures of the British countryside.  You can’t relive the sensation unless you’re actually interacting with it right now.

The true downside?  It’s nearly impossible to share.  You can’t sit at a party and tell a pretty girl (or boy) something you gleaned here.  “There used to be a Clarke’s on Third Avenue in the shadow of the El Train” just doesn’t evoke the same feeling that reading about the underworld beneath the tracks does.

Either way, I enjoyed reading it, and dipping back into it to write this review, so I’m happy I purchased it.  But if I had to choose a Morris, I’d go with Venice every day.

 

Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine novelist whose latest book is a comic fantasy set in ancient Greece entitled The Malakiad.  Check it out!  Paperback and Ebook.

Greater Venice – Or How a Swampy City Dominated the Eastern Mediterranean

Many people can name the great Empires: the Roman Empire, the British Empire and even the Mongols roll quickly from the tongues of people with even rudimentary educations.

But there existed a powerful empire that many people don’t recall offhand, and that empire was the Venetian Empire.  Yes, the tiny city of Venice, mired in a swampy lagoon once possessed the largest trade empire in the Mediterranean with colonies stretching to Greece, Cyprus and Turkey, many of which they held on to for centuries.

This empire was a major actor in the crusades and in the subsequent wars between Christianity and Islam.  The Venetian Arsenal (map above) was the engine that produced most of the ships that sent crusaders on their way as well as the ships that fought–and won–the battle of Lepanto, possibly the most important naval engagement between the two warring monotheisms.

In light of its importance, it does come as a bit of a surprise that so few people know about this particular empire.  I’m a bit of a history enthusiast, but though I knew it had existed, I only recently learned the details about it.

Why is that, I asked myself.

I think there are three major reasons for its lack of fame.

The first is geographic.  This empire wasn’t a contiguous land empire in the tradition of Rome or the Mongols.  People seem to have an easier time imagining this type of structure.  For a far-flung sea empire to live in the imagination, it needs to have good marketing (the sun never sets on the British Empire).

The second and third reasons are psychological and, to the medieval / renaissance mind, possibly moral.  For one thing, the Venetian Empire’s big break came because they betrayed one (possibly two) supposed allies.  Having contracted to take a group of crusaders to the Holy Land, the Doge decided to have them sack Constantinople, an allied Christian city, instead.  The riches from that expedition were the cornerstone of the empire.

For another thing, the “crusades” fought by the Venetians were more about trade routes and money than about religion, despite claims to the contrary on both sides.  The Venetians had no problem with muslims.  They traded with them when it suited them and went to war when it suited them.  Everyone knew this, and for that reason, they never admired the Venetians in the same way as they admired the crusaders who spent time in the Holy Land (even though their own motives were also often suspect).

Anyhow, it’s a fascinating tale and, as you can probably imagine given my track record of buying Folio Society books, it’s one that I absorbed through reading one of their volumes.  This particular tome, The Venetian Empire: A Sea Voyage by Jan Morris is up to their usual standards and was a great read, mainly because of the colloquial way in which Morris (whose own story is quite interesting in itself) treats the subject: an island-hopping tour of the empire, with the history thrown in in such a way that it hardly intrudes.

This book landed squarely in our Italian period, which also helped make it interesting… even though Venice was only recently grafted on to Italy, and then by force majeure (it took Napoleon himself to do it, in fact).

I would strongly recommend this one to anyone who wants to learn about this somewhat forgotten historical period…  Or to any general reader looking for something a little bit different.  A great read, and one that will teach you a bunch of stuff you didn’t know.

 

Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine writer active in several genres whose most recent science fiction novel is Incursion.  You can buy it here.

 

When Italians Look Back

Our Italianite period continues today with the review of one of the great Italian books of the 20th century.  Now, other than Umberto Eco, I haven’t read that much modern Italian literature but, falling victim to the Folio Society’s beautiful marketing pitch and the fact that their books are utterly wonderful, I decided t purchase The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani.

When reading the description, I expected to find a book very similar to Brideshead Revisited, which I loved.  Instead, I found a book with a darker edge and an utter lack of the poetry of elegy.  Of course, that might be down to the translation, but I didn’t feel that Waugh, as a writer and evoker of feelings, has anything to fear from Bassani.

Nevertheless, the book, which starts somewhat slowly, does become engrossing by the end, when things begin to unravel for the protagonists and the relationships between the young characters become a little more muddied.

Of course, we are told on the first page that the story has a sad ending, as it deals with a group of Jewish families on the eve of the Second World War.  The impact was lessened in my case because it became impossible to fall in love with–or even to truly sympathize—with the mercurial Micòl, the narrator’s love interest.  I generally have no problem falling head over heels for this kind of character, and what is basically a Holly Golightly character should, in my opinion, have been much more compelling.

But if the characters left me a bit cold, the same can’t be said of the setting.  While the city of Ferrara as described by Bassani is unremarkable, the walled home of the titular family becomes a kind of unforgettable wonderland which lives on in memory long after the foibles of the characters are forgotten.

I haven’t seen the film based on the novel, perhaps it is better than the book when it comes to characters–what Micòl lacks in writing can be fixed by any decent casting director (sadly, it wasn’t… just did a google image search)–and I’d love to know what those of you who’ve seen it think.

Anyhow, if you enjoy unforgettable settings or different takes on the Holocaust, this one may be for you.  Others might prefer to read Brideshead Revisited for the elegiac content or Breakfast at Tiffany’s for Micòl done right.

 

Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine novelist and short story writer.  He is the author of Siege, a far future science fiction book which explores what it means to be human–and why that definition matters.  Buy it here!

Contributor Copies – Largish Monkeys at the End of the World

Today, we continue with our review of different contributor copies.  Se here and here for earlier posts in this series.  As I’ve mentioned before, I enjoy the huge variety of themes and, particularly takes on what, at first glance might appear to be a very tightly-focused collection.

For example, when I saw the guidelines of the book that became Zombie Kong, I truly wondered just how many takes on the fifty-foot zombie gorilla could be possible.  In order to avoid getting caught up among dozens of what I thought would be identical stories, I put the beginning of my story in Congo and the end in Brazil.

What I remember most vividly about writing this tale (“Shadow of the Gorilla) is that I was sitting in a coffee shop researching Congolese ports when I realized that there was one particular town on the Congo River which was located exactly where I needed it.  Unfortunately, the port was called… Banana.

I groaned out loud in the middle of the restaurant, and my wife, who was working beside me (we were supposedly on vacation at the beach, but we were both toiling) looked at me sharply, wondering what was wrong.  I responded that no one was going to believe that the port in a giant monkey story was called Banana.  It would seem like a cheap authorly cop-out in order to avoid doing any research.

Nevertheless, the story got written and sold to the antho, and I received a contributor’s copy which I read (like every book that ever falls into my hands) years later.

I needn’t have worried. The subject matter which I felt would be so constricting, was treated every which way by the talented authors in the book.  Some, like me, played it straight.  Others went the “news story” route, or made it a funny story (not sure how funny a fifty-foot undead ape looking to tear you to pieces might seem to the people involved, but the authors captured the tone perfectly).  From the gory to the laugh-out-loud funny, this is a book with something for everyone.

The second book I’m looking at today is entitled Enter the Apocalypse.  It’s a collection of short stories about how the apocalypse happened.  This one contains my story “Passing the Torch” which was accepted after I agreed to change the complete structure of the tale (who says a writer’s life is easy?).

But the rest of the stories followed a similar pattern to Zombie Kong: they were clearly written by people with an incredible capacity to think outside the box while, technically, remaining within the box.

We were privileged to be able to host author Nick Barton here with his particular take on what makes an apocalypse appealing.  Reading between the lines of his post, you will get a clear picture of the kind of writer who can use the constraints of a prompt to write something truly special.

But I think the hats must truly go off to the editors of these two books.  Selecting the right stories to give variety without being too gimmicky must be a difficult balancing act, and both Gondolfi (Apocalypse) and Daley (Kong) have managed that tightrope walk beautifully.

 

Gustavo Bondoni has published more than two hundred short stories.  Two collections of his previously published work are available: Tenth Orbit and Other Faraway Places and Virtuoso and Other Stories.

Remembering a Time when Political Discussion was the Province of Intelligent People

Social media seems to have given us a new paradigm: everyone, no matter how uneducated or unprepared for public discourse, posts political opinions, and we’re supposed to respect them, even if they’re moronic.

So what we end up with is that someone with perhaps four working brain cells posts a political statement which is based on a popular view or a piece of news fabricated by the Huffington Post or by Fox News – both sides are equally stupid when it comes to this, so not making any distinctions by party today).  Perhaps they just copy and paste some one-sided meme. Then, an equally ignorant individual from the other side jumps in and refutes the argument.

No one, of course, uses the media bias chart where everything under the midpoint of the yellow rectangle needs to be ignored if you have aspirations to being an intelligent human being… And any news further to the right or left of “skews” is worthless.

Eventually, the discussion dissolves into name calling in which people who aren’t racists get called racists, people who aren’t Nazis get called Nazis, and people who aren’t Communist get called Communist.  Of course, all of the people who call people these things are idiots…

Like all religions, politics has become dogmatic: if you don’t agree with the virulent left, you are a racist, if you don’t agree with the virulent right, you are a commie.

And then there’s Trump, who stirs the pot for unknowable reasons of his own which only makes things worse.  But this isn’t limited to the US… it’s a worldwide phenomenon.

in 1928, things were different.  Back then, political discourse was for thinkers.  There were expendable idiots even then, of course, but they were just rank-and-file members of different political parties who could be counted on to grab king’s horses or die trying.  But the actual thinking was done by individuals with qualifications.

Which is why, ninety years later, A Room of One’s Own holds up so well.

Now, those who know me well, know that I think extreme leftist thought (like extreme rightist thought) is hugely unproductive.  Making everything about identity politics, attempting deconstruction and brushing off a hundred years of evidence that shows that certain economic models simply don’t work unless you hold the population to them at gunpoint don’t strike me as the actions of intelligent people with everyone’s best interest in mind.  In fact they are more akin to the thinking of the religious fanatics they supposedly oppose.

Worse, I’ve gone on record disagreeing with Woolf’s opinions about Middlemarch, so I’m emotionally invested in disagreeing with her in particular…

Nevertheless, any fair reader will admit that Virginia Woolf wrote a revolutionary, angry book that is, at the same time, cogent and calm in its delivery.  As a means to attain a goal it strikes me as a hugely superior method than going out and calling everyone a racist.

In fact, this book-and the speech it was based on-are a political tract disguised as a bit of advice given to a group of women who wish to make their way in the world as writers.  It highlights an inequality by way of a series of remarks about a fictitious women’s college and then focuses on the one thing that would help the women in her audience overcome that unfortunate reality.  It doesn’t put everyone in a position to help them in the role of the enemy (which, at best is counterproductive and at worst can lead to Trump and Brexit).

So, am I recommending that you read a political essay from ninety years ago, from a side of the spectrum that isn’t my favorite?  Yes, I am.  I believe more people need to read this and to think about why it works, and why it hasn’t been out of print since its initial publication in 1929 – and long after its initial goals have been reached (remember that, today, there are many more female writers than male writers being published).

Maybe if more people did so, political discussion would return to something approaching semi-evolved subhuman intelligence.  Even that would be a vast improvement.

 

Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine novelist and short story writer who prefers to explore the ramifications of technology as opposed to politics.  This makes him very different from almost all science fiction writers published today.  His novel Outside is a prime example of this preference.

Dr. Livingstone, I Presume

As I’ve mentioned here before, I live about a block and a half from a beautiful Anglican church that holds a jamboree every year.  They have games for children, food and, in one delightful room, piles of used books for sale.

I particularly love this because the kind of books they have for sale tend towards the things that the British community in Argentina would have had on their shelves in the fifties, sixties and seventies: books and other periodicals in English that I never would have thought to buy for myself.  Often, they can be had for a token price and all proceeds go to charity, so there’s plenty of incentive to bring home something outside your normal comfort zone.

One of these titles was The White Nile by Alan Moorehead, a hefty hardcover that I immediately grabbed out of the pile.

Now, for those of you who don’t know it, the history of the exploration and colonization of the lower reaches of the Nile in the latter half of the 19th century is fascinating, and Moorehead’s style makes for gripping reading.  The tale of Livingstone and Stanley is probably the most famous of these, but perhaps the military quests and particularly Gordon’s famous defeat at Khartoum are the most interesting parts.

Like Tarzan of the Apes, this is a book that one needs to read without falling into the revisionist trap.  Published in 1960, a time where the glories of the British Empire lived vividly in the minds of many, it doesn’t pander to modern sensibilities.  That’s not to say it’s rampantly racist or one-sided–it isn’t; Moorehead was a historian with a decent amount of sensitivity to the people he wrote about–but it IS written from the British viewpoint, and exclusively through the testimony of white explorers, many of whom truly believed that they were bringing light to a dark region of the world.  When you read their descriptions of what they found, it’s even possible for open-minded readers to understand why they felt this way.

If you can set aside modern thought patterns for a moment, this book is nearly as good as any lost race novel at transporting you to fascinating worlds… with the added benefit that the events related therein actually took place in real life.  It’s an escape from the pressures and rhythms of everyday life that make it well worth the effort of leaving one’s sensibilities aside.

And you’ll learn one heck of a lot along the way.

 

Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine novelist and short story writer.  He is the author of the well-received novel Siege.