Currently reading....

Back to Green Hills: I don't know if I can support Hemmy on this--trepsing throught the bush killing Rhino after Rhino, struggling with my ego about who's Rhino is bigger and who's shot is better. I try to find a glimps of redemption, and settle with page 108, "through Turgenieff, I knew I had lived there," (1935 Charles Sciibner's Sons), and know that he wants me to feel like I was there. I have been there. Myself, through Dorris Lessing in 'African Laughter,' Ishmael Beah in 'A Long Way Gone,' J.M. Coatzee and 'Life and Times of Michael K." There is beauty and what is horrid, but I don't feel as though I am paticipating in a rape. I must revisit the old classics, for only shorts like 'Hills Like White Elephants' are are fresh in my mind. Is there compassion? Or only a journey through man's struggle with the ego, with no transcendence? I must revisit. Is that the point? Maybe thus the unfortunate end..maybe that is the lesson of the story. I don't want to understand why men shoot Rhino for sport, or laugh at the hyena eating his own intestines as they spill out from a gunshot wound....This is a hard one for me.

Hashish: A Smuggler's Tale by Henri de Monfreid. This is a unique glimpse into what the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, and the outlying cultures were in the 1930's. Monfreid beautifully describes a world that many of us will never see. Stay tuned for exerpts.

Green Hills of Africa, Hemmingway. Noticing the use of the word 'and' to keep events moving, as only Hemmingway can.