Jusr received the Adventure 2022 issue-and talk about timing- Out of Africa with: Meryl Streep, Robert Redford and Klaus Maria Brandauer circe 1985 was on the Turner movie Channel the other night-one of my all-time favorites- and sonofagun, there's a great article by Wayne Van Zwoll on the history, and of special interest, the actual Express Rifle Denys-Finch-Hatton used in real life was pictured and detailed. Everything I love about Hemingway's writings about Africa, and the fotos and cast of characters from his first Safari (1933) until his last, 20 years later-Baron Bror Von Blixen, Beryl Markham, plus not mentioned but in the mix- Phillip Perccival, Dennis Zaphiro and Dick Cooper-- great piece of writng, Sir- well done indeed. RWTF
In my teens I discovered Africa in Literature. There are a lot of Hunting tales and I ultimately wound up spending a goodly number of years in Francophone Africa where I can still be found today. But for me three books read early on are still the best:
The Turning Wheels, by Stuart Cloete - the story of the vortrekers. There is an overwhelming sense of the vastness and color of the Veld. I read that book when I was 14...some terrible scenes like when a man trapped in a tree by a musk ox has his foot wedge by a branch and the ox licks the sole off he boot and the skin off the foot.....
Out of Africa by Karen Blixen: The first line of the book remains with me to this day: "I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills". There was something about Kenya in the pre-WWI era that is just incredibly romantic. The movie was good. The book is timeless
The Flame Trees of Thika, by Elspeth Huxley. A child view Kenya..but never were characters so tightly drawn and the romance and the tense tautness of those feelings just overwhelms. Besides the romantic tension between the protagonists, there's a scene where the family huddled in a wagon without their guns, were being hunted by a rogue bull-elephant.
I've also read books about the interminable wars....starting with the Boer War.....and all the post independence savagery and been involved in some of it. The Continent has changed or maybe it is in transition. Yet those three books still stay with me 60 years later like a fine wine.
I believe you meant to say, in your dialect malapropism, "Vas ist Los?"" anyway, I started reading Hemingway in 5th grade- first was his post-WW1 roman a clef of PTSD- "Big Two-Hearted River" followed by "A Farewell to Arms"--LIke "Don Ernesto" I am still today an avid reader- mainly fiction, and now I have a sizable library of not only his short stories, articles with the "Key West" letters to Arnold Gingrich for Esquire magazine, but books about his life and women and 3 boys, several written by former wives, friends, and even his brother Leicester.
Of all his works, IMO- his two best of all short stories were from his 1933 first African Safari, financed by his second wife & her multi-buck family- Pauline Pfieffer- : "The Snows of Kilamanjaro" and "The Short, Happy Life of Francis MaComber"-- the second story is based, somewhat on a 1908 era Safari scandal based on antics of European nobility, possibly Baron Bror Von Blixen (my kinda guy)--hard to prove that today, but interesting enough-to me, anyway. His 2 best of all novels, again IMO- are: "For Whom The Bell Tolls" and "Islands In The Stream"--
In my teens I discovered Africa in Literature. There are a lot of Hunting tales and I ultimately wound up spending a goodly number of years in Francophone Africa where I can still be found today. But for me three books read early on are still the best:
The Turning Wheels, by Stuart Cloete - the story of the vortrekers. There is an overwhelming sense of the vastness and color of the Veld. I read that book when I was 14...some terrible scenes like when a man trapped in a tree by a musk ox has his foot wedge by a branch and the ox licks the sole off he boot and the skin off the foot.....
Out of Africa by Karen Blixen: The first line of the book remains with me to this day: "I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills". There was something about Kenya in the pre-WWI era that is just incredibly romantic. The movie was good. The book is timeless........
I too via literature discovered Africa, of which I really had not the slightest idea, in my teens. My English teacher, thru a change of life early on, had decided she would expand our small town minds by making us dissect every word and phrase of the movie. I know it like back of hand, have lived it and witnessed such Lion attack and am forever changed as well as forever grateful.
I watch it ever chance, just like a recent viewing, and watch it as if it were the 1st viewing. Pure LIFE it is.....
Just wonderin', is all: Edmundo- have you read Joseph Conrad's "Heart Of Darkness"? Raimey, just wonderin'- how you as a lad growning up would know if your female teacher was going through her "change of life?" Did she actually tell this most personal of feminine traumas to her class? I can only shudder to think about that scenario. RWTF
No, she was going thru a change but @ a very early age. Fresh out of college and married, she left her husband for a Lad @ the Local Boys Ranch. She came in one day looking like Mormon, not that there's anything wrong with it, and the next like a Flower Child or similar.
Because Ed the book was about European settlers in Kenya. And, you know squat all about African societies yet you chose to make a lovely book all about modern day political correctness. One day I'll sit down with you and try to explain the Mauritanian split between Bidan Maure (white Moors) and the Senegal valley black Africa tribes, the peuhl, Toukouleur, Wolof and Soninke and the castes and slaves that exist in all four, Or the 250 different languages spoken in Chad and slaving raids that take place to this day. I feel I need to go wash my hands. - Save us all from your crusading ignorance.
well argo, "out of africa" is a work of fiction...and as such, we are allowed, i think, to pontificate about the possible themes pursued by the author...
and to expand this thread to include the past and present state of affairs in kenya, is well, far beyond me...nor do i care....
lets instead, talk about the guns in the movie...
in the lion killing scene, he is carrying an h&h double rifle?
an she, a rigby bolt gun, built on a small frame mauser action?
skb, this thread began about the movie, not the book...
then it began to include the book and other books, as well...
then argo tried to make it about his verison of life in kenya and the surrounding region...
either movie or book, a memoir may include some undocumented facts, but it is by definition fiction, because it is only one persons memory of often long past events and individuals...
in 2015, i had the pleasant experience of visiting her home/estate....located in the south western portion of nairobi, the general area is known as the "karen district".
the movie was partially filmed in that house, which has many of it's original furnishings....so it's not fiction - unless you're an idiot.
No Edmund- it just as realism to a great piece of writing turned into a movie- you could say that about Hemingway's novel "For Whom The Bell Tolls"- and as a matter of fact, I think I will.RWTF
C00ps- as Don Ernesto called his close friend and hunting compadre- was- "the real deal". Part of the contract that put 150 large in his bank account back then was Hemingway's insistence that Gary Cooper play the part of Robert Jordan in the movie-and Ingrid Bergmann not too shabby as Pilar either. Born in Mt. in early part of the 20th Century as Frank James Cooper, his father a district court judge in Helena- care to guess how he became known as Gary Cooper. I would love to own and use his working collection of Winchesters and Colts today. RWTF
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