It`s hot in Central America, but it`s not 451 degrees.
A few days before I left on this trip, my friend Tracee loaned me a copy of Ben Fountain`s short story compilation entitled "Brief Encounters with Che Guevara." It seemed apropos to the trip so I decided to bring it as my reading material.
Fortunately, it was a lovely read. Unfortunately, I was done with it in a few days. The stories involve overseas locales of particular interest to me, including Colombia, Haiti, Sierra Leone, and Myanmar. (I haven`t visited the last two, though I`d very much like to.) I was reading the book`s story about an American ornithologist kidnapped by FARC in Colombia as I was on a bus slouching toward that very country. (Of course, that added to the gravitas of where we were going.)
Fountain has visited Haiti some 30 odd times and many of the short stories take place there. The stories were a real deight as they mentioned many little tidbits that I brushed against while I was there a few months ago: RAM playing Thursday nights at the Oloffson, the Macoutes and their wall of murder victim photos, the ghosts of the Special Forces ODAs that were spread throughout the countryside, voodoo shrines, Preval, Papa Doc and Baby Doc, the Naïve movement paintings, etc.
Done with the Fountain book, I started looking for book exchanges or bookstores with English language books. On the shelf at a German-run bistro in Cartagena, I found one that looked interesting. It`s titled "SOURCES: An anthology of contemporary materials useful for preserving personal sanity while braving the great technological wilderness." It was published in 1972 and its editor, the cover proclaims, is one Theodore Roszak, "the author of `The Making of a Counter Culture.`" I was at first reminded of something one of my philosophy professors in San Francisco, Jacob Needleman, said about that era: "In the 60s in San Francisco, you couldn`t throw a brick out a window without hitting a guru." (Is that line cribbed from "The Electric Acid Kool-Aid Test"?)
Still, the author list looked interesting. There was a lot of stuff I`ve already read or been exposed to (Mencius, Thomas Merton, Pablo Neruda, Martin Buber), some stuff I`ve heard about but hadn`t read (Carlos Casteneda, Alan Watts) and then a ton of random other stuff including things about Drop City, Colorado (hippie commune obsessed with geodesic domes, just like every other commune of the era that bumped into Buckminster Fuller), essays from MANAS, Norman O. Brown, R. D. Laing, etc.
I didn´t want to give up Tracee`s book in trade, since it would be expensive to replace in the US, so I went to a store and picked up a copy of "Grapes of Wrath" for USD$4 or so and swapped that.
After about a week, and maybe 10-15 of the essays, I was sick of it. So many words, so little content. A stark reminder of all the loony characters of my youth in the "New Age" movement who, looking back, were fascinated by anything which confused them, taking it as axiomatic that anything non sense, without sense, was really a profound wisdom just beyond their grasp.
Forward, onward. I found the trip`s third book at a shop in San Jose, Costa Rica. Mora Books is the name. It`s tucked away on the second floor of a modern style shopping center near the town`s central market area. It`s run by a bunch of bilingually chatty, long-haired counter culture types who read sci-fi and DJ jazz records on weeknights. Like all the best used book stores, the aisles are avalance hazards. You have to turn sideways to make your way from "Classics" to "Harlequin Romances." The bathroom is so full of boxes of still more books that you have to sit on the toilet seat sideways and then worry that the precariously balanced top boxes might end your life right there, leaving you like Elvis or George II.
It took an hour to sort through all the "airport best-seller" thrillers and random junk from the last four decades. I finally settled on Erica Jong`s "Fear of Flying" for USD$2. I knew little about her or the book, save some tidbits from a Salon interview I read years ago which mentioned her famous (at least in some circles) "zipless fuck."
The book has been absolutely delightful, although now I have to find a fourth book to read. It reminds me a lot of Henry Miller`s "Tropic of Cancer" and "Tropic of Capricorn," but with more shit (literally, and that`s a strong statement as Miller doesn`t shy from the subject), slightly less sex (ibid), and more pedantic snobbery (reminding me of Umberto Eco) in place of Miller`s more refined critiques of the human condition. Still -- absolutely excellent.
I need to find another book exchange that has something more than Tom Clancy, John Grisham, Stephen King, and Robert Ludlum. The bar has been raised.
Fortunately, it was a lovely read. Unfortunately, I was done with it in a few days. The stories involve overseas locales of particular interest to me, including Colombia, Haiti, Sierra Leone, and Myanmar. (I haven`t visited the last two, though I`d very much like to.) I was reading the book`s story about an American ornithologist kidnapped by FARC in Colombia as I was on a bus slouching toward that very country. (Of course, that added to the gravitas of where we were going.)
Fountain has visited Haiti some 30 odd times and many of the short stories take place there. The stories were a real deight as they mentioned many little tidbits that I brushed against while I was there a few months ago: RAM playing Thursday nights at the Oloffson, the Macoutes and their wall of murder victim photos, the ghosts of the Special Forces ODAs that were spread throughout the countryside, voodoo shrines, Preval, Papa Doc and Baby Doc, the Naïve movement paintings, etc.
Done with the Fountain book, I started looking for book exchanges or bookstores with English language books. On the shelf at a German-run bistro in Cartagena, I found one that looked interesting. It`s titled "SOURCES: An anthology of contemporary materials useful for preserving personal sanity while braving the great technological wilderness." It was published in 1972 and its editor, the cover proclaims, is one Theodore Roszak, "the author of `The Making of a Counter Culture.`" I was at first reminded of something one of my philosophy professors in San Francisco, Jacob Needleman, said about that era: "In the 60s in San Francisco, you couldn`t throw a brick out a window without hitting a guru." (Is that line cribbed from "The Electric Acid Kool-Aid Test"?)
Still, the author list looked interesting. There was a lot of stuff I`ve already read or been exposed to (Mencius, Thomas Merton, Pablo Neruda, Martin Buber), some stuff I`ve heard about but hadn`t read (Carlos Casteneda, Alan Watts) and then a ton of random other stuff including things about Drop City, Colorado (hippie commune obsessed with geodesic domes, just like every other commune of the era that bumped into Buckminster Fuller), essays from MANAS, Norman O. Brown, R. D. Laing, etc.
I didn´t want to give up Tracee`s book in trade, since it would be expensive to replace in the US, so I went to a store and picked up a copy of "Grapes of Wrath" for USD$4 or so and swapped that.
After about a week, and maybe 10-15 of the essays, I was sick of it. So many words, so little content. A stark reminder of all the loony characters of my youth in the "New Age" movement who, looking back, were fascinated by anything which confused them, taking it as axiomatic that anything non sense, without sense, was really a profound wisdom just beyond their grasp.
Forward, onward. I found the trip`s third book at a shop in San Jose, Costa Rica. Mora Books is the name. It`s tucked away on the second floor of a modern style shopping center near the town`s central market area. It`s run by a bunch of bilingually chatty, long-haired counter culture types who read sci-fi and DJ jazz records on weeknights. Like all the best used book stores, the aisles are avalance hazards. You have to turn sideways to make your way from "Classics" to "Harlequin Romances." The bathroom is so full of boxes of still more books that you have to sit on the toilet seat sideways and then worry that the precariously balanced top boxes might end your life right there, leaving you like Elvis or George II.
It took an hour to sort through all the "airport best-seller" thrillers and random junk from the last four decades. I finally settled on Erica Jong`s "Fear of Flying" for USD$2. I knew little about her or the book, save some tidbits from a Salon interview I read years ago which mentioned her famous (at least in some circles) "zipless fuck."
The book has been absolutely delightful, although now I have to find a fourth book to read. It reminds me a lot of Henry Miller`s "Tropic of Cancer" and "Tropic of Capricorn," but with more shit (literally, and that`s a strong statement as Miller doesn`t shy from the subject), slightly less sex (ibid), and more pedantic snobbery (reminding me of Umberto Eco) in place of Miller`s more refined critiques of the human condition. Still -- absolutely excellent.
I need to find another book exchange that has something more than Tom Clancy, John Grisham, Stephen King, and Robert Ludlum. The bar has been raised.
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