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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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A series of thoughtful essays on a variety of subjects from Falstaff to The Secret Commonwealth, and his firsthand meetings with Evelyn Waugh and Robert Graves.
Interesting, perhaps it chief redeeming feature is that it recommends and refers one on to read other authors one hasn't heard of. Good.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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A light read, but, like the last book by Henry Miller, far too preoccupied with Beaver. Nonetheless an interesting life - although a more succinct and factual account can be found in the Wiki.
Link: Wikipedia on Grey Owl
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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It's been a while since I've read Henry Miller. Like 25 odd years, and so when I saw "Under the Roofs of Paris" I picked it up. Inside the flap it advertised itself as having 10 times the sexual content of Tropic of Cancer.
And it's true, it's out and out pornography, fucking and more fucking and if there's a paragraph without fucking it's only to help the main character (read Henry) get from one location to the other, where he can fuck some more (and break more taboos....).
"There are books to be read with one hand, and books to be read with two..."
That noted, this is a one handed book. Now I wonder how much of what he's telling us actually transpired, and how much he's making up, it seems a bit much and then I think some more and realize he's probably, if anything, toned it down. I mean, if you were so inclined you could have all of these adventures and then some. But personally, I'm more interested in the characters, the environment, the art scene of Paris in the 30's, etc. Which is my fault, because it really isn't that sort of book, not at all, it teases you with the introduction then proceeds immediately to the main chance.
It's good, he can write for sure, but - be warned, it's all about the fucking.
Link: Henry Miller on YouTube
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
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Only about half way through (a slender, unfortunately abridged version), but as I bought it today that isn't so bad. It's terrific. The author, Peter Fleming (brother of Ian Fleming), is off in or around 1933 in search of the Fawcett expedition that vanished in Brazil in 1925.
I've read a similar account in The Lost City of Z, the book, and was intrigued when I found this closer account. It's excellent.
Excerpts:
"W made amicable and expansive gestures with our arms. We grinned. We put on every semblance of delight; "Ticanto" we cried. We had been told it was the thing to say. "Ticanto," we cried with desperate geniality, wondering what it meant."
- This upon meeting a possibly hostile tribe
"Alas the alligator is a fraud. His formidable reputation -- as empty as his skin, which mountebanks formerly hung in their booths -- is, like that skin, a hallowed device of quackery, a trick to fire imaginations which have to take the tropics on trust."
- This on alligator hunting.
"Beyond that, and forty feet below it, was the river; a river half a mile wide and more: a river so big, so long expected, and so phenomenal in every way that it seemed hardly possible to have come on it so suddenly, to have no more warning that it was waiting for us round the corner of those palms than we should have had of a dog's dead body in the road: a river fired and bloody in the sunset: a river that we loved instantly and learnt at last to hate. we gaped at this river. There was exaltation in the air."
- On first encountering the Amazon.
It's so far a great book, wonderful (although abridged) reading, and curious to note the author (like Speke in the search for the source of the Nile) died in a hunting accident. How common can that be?
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
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Interesting. Some curious ideas curiously woven together (they make sense later) - and self-referential, it's inspired me to do a little research (fact checking? It's made me curious is all).