Dirty Old Man does Africa
A coworker loaned me Dark Star Safari, by Paul Theroux, with glowing recommendations. The subtitle is "Overland from Cairo to Cape Town," and that pretty much describes the idea of the book: the author traveled through East Africa, from Cairo to Cape Town, via bus, train, car, and boat (and a few planes when land borders were closed). It's an interesting view of Africa, and another coworker who spent two years in South Africa in the Peace Corps said it was fairly accurate. Unfortunately, though, I can't recommend the book, because the author comes off as a total jerk and a dirty old man, and his unpleasant authorial persona spoiled the book for me. A few examples of what I mean: Djibouti had a bad reputation locally....French soldiers still garrisoned there had made the place notorious for their enthusiasm for child prostitution.
"Twelve and thirteen-year-old girls!" an aid worker told me. "Such scenes! The soldiers go to these terrible nightclubs and get drunk. You see them staggering around the streets. Drunkenness and prostitution--drugs too."
On the kind of trip I was taking, the idea of witnessing such colorful depravity and dissipation seriously tempted me.
Yes, he wants to go to a place known for child prostitution and calls that "colorful depravity and dissipation."
To be fair, he befriends a couple of young prostitutes later in the book, and makes a point of how he doesn't sleep with them even though they keep propositioning him. You get the idea that that's mostly because he's afraid of AIDS, though.
In Khartoum, he sees a veiled Muslim woman walking with her husband to the mosque, and he spends two paragraphs on how erotic he finds her feet and ankles. He spends his downtime on the trip working on an erotic novella inspired by some tourists he meets in Egypt (no, really). And if you're worried that you might forget exactly what sort of novella he's writing, fear not: I only counted one mention of it (out of many) that didn't come with the word "erotic" attached.
Aside from the dirty old man aspect, he's just an unpleasant character: in Cape Town, he sees a newspaper headline saying "Pessimistic Globetrotter Wins Nobel Prize" and becomes downright petulant that it's not referring to him.
I think the funniest thing that happened to me when I was reading this book was this: As he approached Ethiopia, I started to crave Ethiopian food, and Stephen and I went out for it. At some point in the conversation, Stephen asked "Who wouldn't like Ethiopian food, once they've tried it?"
"Some people don't like the texture of the bread," I said.
"Hmph," he said, in that "You're probably right, but I don't understand those people" tone.
Then I got to the part of the book where the author is actually in Ethiopia and read his description of injera: "'Like a crepe or a pancake,' people said, but no: it is cool, moist, and rubbery, less like a crepe than an old damp bathmat." He is very fond of the bathmat simile, referring to it every time he mentions food as long as he's in Ethiopia. Apparently some people don't like Ethiopian food.
There are definitely good points to the book. The best parts are when he goes back to the places where he lived in the 1960s as a Peace Corps volunteer and after that, comparing the current situation to what he knew then. He has interesting political, social, and economic perspectives, and obviously that's what my coworkers enjoyed about the book. But ultimately I thought they were overshadowed by his unpleasant authorial persona, and I couldn't enjoy the book.
"Twelve and thirteen-year-old girls!" an aid worker told me. "Such scenes! The soldiers go to these terrible nightclubs and get drunk. You see them staggering around the streets. Drunkenness and prostitution--drugs too."
On the kind of trip I was taking, the idea of witnessing such colorful depravity and dissipation seriously tempted me.
Yes, he wants to go to a place known for child prostitution and calls that "colorful depravity and dissipation."
To be fair, he befriends a couple of young prostitutes later in the book, and makes a point of how he doesn't sleep with them even though they keep propositioning him. You get the idea that that's mostly because he's afraid of AIDS, though.
In Khartoum, he sees a veiled Muslim woman walking with her husband to the mosque, and he spends two paragraphs on how erotic he finds her feet and ankles. He spends his downtime on the trip working on an erotic novella inspired by some tourists he meets in Egypt (no, really). And if you're worried that you might forget exactly what sort of novella he's writing, fear not: I only counted one mention of it (out of many) that didn't come with the word "erotic" attached.
Aside from the dirty old man aspect, he's just an unpleasant character: in Cape Town, he sees a newspaper headline saying "Pessimistic Globetrotter Wins Nobel Prize" and becomes downright petulant that it's not referring to him.
I think the funniest thing that happened to me when I was reading this book was this: As he approached Ethiopia, I started to crave Ethiopian food, and Stephen and I went out for it. At some point in the conversation, Stephen asked "Who wouldn't like Ethiopian food, once they've tried it?"
"Some people don't like the texture of the bread," I said.
"Hmph," he said, in that "You're probably right, but I don't understand those people" tone.
Then I got to the part of the book where the author is actually in Ethiopia and read his description of injera: "'Like a crepe or a pancake,' people said, but no: it is cool, moist, and rubbery, less like a crepe than an old damp bathmat." He is very fond of the bathmat simile, referring to it every time he mentions food as long as he's in Ethiopia. Apparently some people don't like Ethiopian food.
There are definitely good points to the book. The best parts are when he goes back to the places where he lived in the 1960s as a Peace Corps volunteer and after that, comparing the current situation to what he knew then. He has interesting political, social, and economic perspectives, and obviously that's what my coworkers enjoyed about the book. But ultimately I thought they were overshadowed by his unpleasant authorial persona, and I couldn't enjoy the book.