Deep South - Paul Theroux. The best travel book on the American south I have read
QuoteDeep South - Paul Theroux. The best travel book on the American south I have readThat's interesting. I read a few Theroux books in my teens and enjoyed them, but recently picked up a couple and found them pretty dull. Have read a couple of Jonathan Raban's on the US though too - Old Glory and Hunting Mr Heartbreak - which I'd thoroughly recommend.
If you enjoy Jonathan Raban's style I recommend Passage to Juneau, which is (loosely) built around a solo trip up the BC and southern Alaska coast
I found Beevor's account of the Spanish Civil War very readable.https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jun/24/featuresreviews.guardianreview4
Hugh Thomas' The Spanish Civil War is the classic account. Beevor does his usual clear and engaging job. There are also the accounts of writers and journalists there at the time: Orwell's Homage To Catalonia of course and a more qualified recommendation for Hemmingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn's The Face of War starts with some astonishing reporting from the war in Spain and continues all the way to Central America in the 90s. I like taking a book about the country I'm visiting on climbing trips.
Quote from: duncan on October 03, 2017, 09:28:58 amHugh Thomas' The Spanish Civil War is the classic account. Beevor does his usual clear and engaging job. There are also the accounts of writers and journalists there at the time: Orwell's Homage To Catalonia of course and a more qualified recommendation for Hemmingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn's The Face of War starts with some astonishing reporting from the war in Spain and continues all the way to Central America in the 90s. I like taking a book about the country I'm visiting on climbing trips.Thanks. I was a bit put off the Hugh Thomas version by some reviews suggesting it was dated and biased but will take a look. I love Hemingway so For Whom The Bell Tolls was devoured a while ago. Homage to Catalonia is also on the list.
I really enjoyed Homage to Catalonia and For Whom The Bell Tolls, but they're very different books by very different writers. FWTBT reads (to me) as a glorification of death in the gallant struggle against Franco - and I've heard Hemingway variously described as a warmonger and a fascist. Homage is far more honest in it's documentation of the chaotic management of the Republican forces and the futility of their resistance in the face of their own brutal in-fighting.Bear in mind that Orwell fought with the POUM when in Spain; this is what Hemingway has to say about them:"The POUM was never serious. It was a heresy of crackpots and wild men and it was really just an infantilism. There were some honest misguided people. There was one fairly good brain and there was a little fascist money. Not much. The poor POUM. They were very silly people."What I'm trying to say is, don't just read Hemingway without reading something else.Before you read any of this you should probably read Laurie Lee's As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, which is just one of the most mind-blowing books I've ever read. Lee travelled to Spain, without knowing any Spanish, and walked from north to south, earning money along the way by playing his fiddle on street corners. He was naively oblivious, as he travelled, to the mobilisation of Franco's rebellion and was eventually plucked out of Malaga by the British Navy when war broke out. He wrote of his return to Spain to fight in A Moment of War, though many claim that his account is a fiction and that he never returned. Again, his naivety comes through strongly - it's a similar account to Orwell's in it's description of barely organised chaos, but Orwell feels like a more significant actor in the conflict, while Lee is merely someone being swept along (and very nearly killed) by events that he can neither comprehend or control.
On the subject of travel writing. I quite enjoyed reading this piece on Bruce Chatwin in the Obs. the other weekend.
Read Nicholas Shakespeare's biography a couple of years back - incredibly thorough and full of fascinating insights into the man, but a bit of a wade at times and by the end I liked him rather less.
I've nothing to add to this specific conversation, having never read Theroux, Raban, or even Chatwiin. But I love it when this thread bursts back into life, as it does from time to time.