Somewhere in Chapter 6 I gave up, and it took a damn long time to get even there. It wasn't that I liked or didn't like Loti; I didn't really give a shit about him. I found wading through her writing resulted in a disconnect from both the story (or history) and the person. Blanch struck me as haughty and disinterested in the reader. Her writing was hard to follow. I'm surprised that I disliked this book so much having read another of her's -- Journey into the Mind's Eye -- which I loved. In fact at one point I looked her up on the internet because I couldn't believe it was the same writer. ( )

When Pierre Loti — adulated writer, naval officer, traveller, amateur acrobat and escapist — died in 1923, he was given a state funeral, the only French writer to have received such an honour other than Victor Hugo. Bohemian, exotic and fiercely romantic; adored and scorned by French society in equal measure, Loti spent his life escaping the constraints of bourgeois France — and in so doing redefined his age. He travelled the South Seas, Asia and the Middle East (his great obsession) and loved with intense passion and freedom wherever he went. Lesley Blanch's biography revived an interest in this "unjustly neglected" French writer and launched reprints of his novels and travel books in France. She says, "He was not just a mawkish and sentimental writer as some think. Remember, people like Henry James and Marcel Proust greatly admired him. He wrote beautifully and had very sensuous rhythms. He could also be ghastly grim — Aziyadé, a burning Turkish love story, opens with an execution." ( )

Full review: ( http://bachlab.balbach.net/coolread4.html#loti ) in summary: the best biography of Pierre Loti in English. ( )