Outstanding collection of Baldwin's essays from previous publications in Harper's, Esquire, Partisan Review, and a handful of transcripts from public Outstanding collection of Baldwin's essays from previous publications in Harper's, Esquire, Partisan Review, and a handful of transcripts from public speeches. Topics vary from literary and film criticism, desegregation, sexuality, travels in the US South, French intellectual life, spiritual beliefs, Harlem, etc. Many offer autobiographical details about his childhood, early writing career, friendships and fractures, his time in Paris, and his reasonings and return to the US.
Highlights and some "must-share" quotes: - Princes and Powers: Baldwin's reportage of the Conference of Negro-African Writers and Artists in September 1956 at the Sorbonne in Paris. Baldwin shares details of the official speeches by midcentury luminaries, as well as his impressions on the larger state of culture and society.
- Faulkner and Desegregation: Literary criticism of Faulkner, and Faulkner's stance on de/segregation. Baldwin slices right to the heart of the southern psyche with several quotes: "What seems to define a southerner, in his own mind at any rate, is his relationship to the North, that is to the rest of the Republic, a relationship which can be at the very best be described as uneasy...the southerner clings to two entirely antithetical doctrines, two legends, two histories... He is part of a country that boasts that it has never lost a war, but he is also a representative of a conquered nation."
- In Search of a Majority: I conceive of my own life as a journey toward something I do not understand, which in the going toward, makes me better. I conceive of God, in fact, as a means of liberation and not a means to control others. Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up."
- Alas, Poor Richard: Hard to identify a favorite in a book of outstanding pieces, but this one was all kinds of layers and may be the one that stays with me the longest - Upon Richard Wright's death in November 1960, Baldwin shares the story of their close friendship and their well-known falling out, from their early meetings as mentor/mentee, their European associations, and eventually their philosophical break. Baldwin is utterly honest and transparent here - speaking of his idolization and approval-seeking, and how this dynamic contributed to the later rupture. Amidst this personal story, Baldwin shares thoughts on several of Wright's works, notably some short stories that I was unfamiliar and quite intrigued by... prompting a click to pick up a used copy of Wright's collected fictions.
5/5* Made copious notes and tagged up the text for review/ revisit later. ...more
Habib starts her fantastic essay collection in Turkey, where people are surprised to hear where she is from:
"Where are you from?" Mehmet asked me t
Habib starts her fantastic essay collection in Turkey, where people are surprised to hear where she is from:
"Where are you from?" Mehmet asked me the first time we met. "Hindistan," I said, using the Turkish word for India. "But you don't live there?" "How do you know?" "Because you are traveling. Only Americans, British, Australians, and Japanese travel." ...He was not mocking me. Brown people like him and me did not fit the stereotype of tourist.
This chance encounter comes around several times in the book through related questions: are guidebooks to foreign destinations available in your language? are you able to secure a passport or visa to travel where you want to go? Habib, a native Malayalam speaker from Kerala, notes that there is no market for guidebooks in Malayalam, and many other regions of the world, and therefore none are available. She digs into the history of the guidebook as a tool, who uses them, and their European roots.
Habib's essay on passports was among my favorite, giving the history of the document itself and its relatively recent inception, alongside her struggles to secure visas while using her Indian passport.
After India secured its independence from the United Kingdom, for two decades from 1947 to 1967, the newly independent Indian state would provide passports only to those citizens it deemed capable of representing India abroad... based on the prevailing notions of caste and class.
Her own visa application to go to France is delayed so long that she must cancel her non-refundable trip plans. All of this while her American husband did not have to go through any of the same process.
Other topics covered: roadtripping, traveling with elders and small children, ancient and medieval travel and "first to reach" monikers, wanderlust from its Romantic origins to Instagram, Habib's father's armchair travel and reading, nature vs urban travel, ships and trains first for imperialism and then for travel, developing countries [deemed by Habib as "Third World" - and she writes an engaging/convincing afterword about her specific word choice here!] competition for tourists' dollars, women's safety when traveling, and uniquely and interestingly enough a brief history of the carousel and how it is a metaphor for modern travel.
HOORAH to a wonderful SELECTED BIBIOGRAPHY at the end! I wrote down several titles. Really happy that was included.
So, an "irreverent" history of travel as the book's subtitle notes? Not quite - a strange editorial decision for the subtitle. But a personal, extremely interesting and well-researched book on travel and travel-related marginalia? Most definitely. Really enjoyed this one!
The feeling of the eerie is very different from the feeling of the weird. The simplest way to get to this difference is by thinking about the oppositiThe feeling of the eerie is very different from the feeling of the weird. The simplest way to get to this difference is by thinking about the opposition - perhaps the most fundamental opposition of all - between presence and absence. ...the weird is constituted by a presence - the presence of that which does not belong... the eerie, by contrast, is constituted by a failure of absence or by a failure of presence. The sensation of the eerie occurs either when there is something present where there should be nothing, or there is nothing present where they should be something."
From "Approaching the Eerie"
In this book of essays, Fisher contrasts the modes of "the weird" and "the eerie" through lengthy literary and film criticism, contrasting the weird in the first half of the book with the eerie in the latter half. The essays and subsections regarding the authors and directors I was familiar with (Wells, Lovecraft, du Maurier, Atwood, Lynch, Kubrick, Tarkovsky, Nolan) were fantastic, and I skimmed the sections on books/stories/films I was not familiar with....more
Loading...
