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Cargando... Paradisepor Larry McMurtry
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. This is a quite readable and interesting account of Larry McMurtry's three-week excursion to some of the most remote small islands of the South Pacific in the company of a mixed bag of international tourists on a freighter-steamer. McMurtry was 64 at the time, with a mother in her 90's who was dying back in his hometown of Archer, Texas. The first few chapters are a sort of reminiscence of his parents' unhappy marriage, and their inability or unwillingness to ever travel more than a few dozen miles from home. He compares it effectively with the impulses that led him to remote Polynesia, partly in search of an understanding of such creators as Gauguin and Melville, who spent much time here. McMurtry is a competent observer of unfamiliar cultures and societies, and makes a number of cogent comparisons with American and European mores. This is a relaxed and interesting look at a part of the world I will probably never visit, and McMurtry gives me a small sense of having accompanied him. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
Long considered to be the brilliant dark horse of literary nonfiction, Pulitzer Prize-winning Larry McMurtry delivers a searing and reflective exploration of what paradise is, whether it exists, and how different it is from life in his Texas hometown. In 1999, Larry McMurtry, whose wanderlust had been previously restricted to the roads of America, set off for a trip to the paradise of Tahiti and the South Sea Islands in an old-fashioned tub of a cruise boat, at a time when his mother was slipping toward a paradise of her own. Opening up to her son in her final days, his mother makes a stunning revelation of a previous marriage and sends McMurtry on a journey of an entirely different kind. Vividly, movingly, and with infinite care, McMurtry paints a portrait of his parents' marriage against the harsh, violent landscape of west Texas. It is their roots--laced with overtones of hard work, bitter disappointment, and the Puritan ethic--that McMurtry challenges by traveling to Tahiti, a land of lush sensuality and easy living. With fascinating detail, shrewd observations, humorous pathos, and unforgettable characters, he begins to answer some of the questions of what paradise is, whether it exists, and how different it is from life in his hometown of Archer City, Texas. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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What McMurtry finds is a world not markedly different from the one he is more familiar with; the dying small towns and Indian reservations of the American West. A shrewd observer of culture, the author notes many parallels between these societies. McMurtry offers generally unflattering views of his travel companions, who fail to understand that by seeking out the last unspoiled places in the world, they are themselves changing them forever.
While not my favorite work of non-fiction by McMurtry, this was a quick read and enjoyable. ( )