Egal, was du bisher so gemacht hast. Die Wahrscheinlichkeit ist groß, dass dein Leben um einiges langweiliger war und ist als das von Beryl Markham.Sie ist wohl eine der unbekanntesten und doch faszinierendsten Frauen des vergangenen Jahrhunderts. Aufgewachsen in Kenia (damals Britisch- Ostafrika) bewegte sie sich meist barfuß auf der Farm ihres alleinerziehenden Vaters zwischen exotischen Tieren und Zuchtpferden. Bevor sie Englisch lernte, sprach sie Swahili.Sie wurde u.a. von einem Löwen angefallen, züchtete Rennpferde und ging (als einzige Frau) mit den einheimischen Stammesmitgliedern auf Großwildjagd. Sie pflegte wilde Liebschaften mit Prominenten und erlang durch ihren Rekord-Atlantikflug schließlich größere Berühmtheit.Als erster Mensch überquerte die Flugpionierin 1936 den Atlantik von West nach Ost, wo sie in Nova Scotia eine Bruchlandung hinlegte, weil ihre Treibstoff-Tanks eingefroren waren.Und als wäre das noch nicht genug, ist sie auch noch eine begnadete Schriftstellerin.Die Höhepunkte ihres abenteuerlichen Lebens hielt sie in dem Buch "West with the night" fest über das Ernest Hemingway schrieb: [...] she has written so well, [...] that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together [...].Mehr als genug Gründe also, ihre Autobiographie zu lesen.Und darum geht’s:Markham beschreibt in "West with the night" die wichtigsten Stationen ihres turbulenten Lebens und ihre ewig währende Liebe zum afrikanischen Kontinent. Dabei geht Markham nur bedingt chronologisch vor. Vielmehr vermischt sie wichtige biografische Ereignisse mit poetischen Gedanken über das Leben an sich. “It is really this, that makes death so hard – curiosity unsatisfied.”Ich kann Hemingway nur zustimmen. Das Buch ist unglaublich schön geschrieben. Immer wieder musste ich meine Lektüre verlangsamen, um bloß nichts von dem feinen Text zu überlesen. Zeile für Zeile ein absoluter Genuss. Jeder Nebensatz kann eine erfrischende Beobachtung enthalten.“[...]It was evidence of the double debt England still owes to ancient China for her two gifts that made expansion possible – tea and gunpowder.”…oder:“They were unshaved and dirty. I had never realized how quickly men deteriorate without razors and clean shirts. They are like potted plants that go to weed unless they are pruned and tended daily.”Während Markham einerseits ihre unglaublichen Errungenschaften völlig unter Wert verkauft, lässt sie anderseits viele pikante Details aus ihrem Leben unerwähnt. Kein Wort zu ihren zahlreichen Liebschaften, dem unterkühlten Verhältnis zu ihrer abwesenden Mutter, der Geburt ihres Sohnes, den sie an Verwandte in die Pflege gab usw. In West with the night dreht sich alles um ihre vier großen Lieben: ihr Vater, Pferde, die Fliegerei und Afrika. Aber das sind schon genug Abenteuer für zehn Leben. Eines ist klar, Beryl Markhams Treibstoff war die Neugier, die sie Zeit ihres Lebens zu den unglaublichsten Taten getrieben hat.“Why am I gazing at this campfire like a lost soul seeking a hope when all that I love is at my wingtips? Because I am curious, Because I am incorrigibly, now, a wanderer “Einen kleinen Minuspunkt gibt es für die Kolonialismus-Mentalität, die natürlich damals vorherrschte und somit auch ihren Weg in das Buch fand. Das familiäre und enge freundschaftliche Verhältnis, das Markham zu vielen Einheimischen hatte, kann nicht darüber hinwegtäuschen, dass diese weit davon entfernt waren gleichgestellt zu sein. Im Gegenteil waren es oft Bedienstete, die aus damaliger Sicht die Führung der Weißen dringend benötigten, um aus der Steinzeit in die Zivilisation geführt zu werden. Fazit – Prepare for a rough landingWie muss es wohl sein barfuß mit dem Speer auf Löwenjagd zu gehen, bei Nacht in unerforschter Wildnis ein Flugzeug blind zu landen oder auf Pferderücken durch die paradiesische Landschaft Ostafrikas zu reiten? Niemand könnte davon schöner berichten als Beryl Markham. Der Unterschied zwischen ihr und Indiana Jones ist, dass es sie wirklich gab! Eine unerschütterliche Abenteurerin, die angetrieben von unstillbarer Neugier die Grenzen des Möglichen verschoben hat. "West with the night": Adrenalin und Poesie. Pflichtlektüre für Abenteurer und Armchair Traveller.Wertung 4/51. Geht gar nicht 2. Is OK 3. Gut 4. Richtig gut 5. awesomatik!Die besten awesomatik Abenteuerbücher auf einen Blick:http://awesomatik.com/2012/10/05/awes...awesomatik KuriosumImmer wieder wurde diskutiert, ob Beryl Markham tatsächlich die Verfasserin ihrer Autobiographie sei oder ob diese nicht von ihrem Ex-Mann, dem Journalist und Ghost Writer Raoul Schumacher geschrieben wurde. So oder so bleibt es ein hervorragendes Buch. Mehr Details über Markhams leben findet man auf scandalouswoman:http://scandalouswoman.blogspot.de/20... Und hier noch eine seltene Filmaufnahme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4Hpy7...
Beryl Markham is someone who you would want to meet and study, I think. This story is nuts, but at the same time, it lacks the pull of human relationships that generally carry me through a story. People obviously read for different reasons, but for me it is relationships that pull me through a story – not necessarily romantic relationships, you understand, but the way people interact. Will they be friends? Will they fall in love? Will they betray each other? There is none of that in this book, so it is not an obvious fit for me as a reader in that way. It is, however, about a badass woman, who was the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west.For the most part, people have such interesting lives. I mean, even a person who lives the most normal, or the most domestic, life ever has some kind of story, something to say about life, something about betrayal or compassion or just what it means to be a human. And then there are people like Beryl Markham, who are like, Oh hai, did I ever tell you about the time I almost got eaten by a lion? !!! ???? Whaaa? That is very exotic to me. And then there was that time where she went hunting boar with her buddies, who were Maasai warriors. Oh, and that other time where she saved everybody from floods and killer ants and killer elephants using just her wits and tiny airplanes. So, despite the general absence of human relationships in this book, it’s just an inherently interesting story.Hemingway was a fan of this book, and it is always interesting to me to read the writers he admired. With Hemingway, I always get this feeling that every sentence is seething with emotion just underneath the surface of what it says, and he’s stuffed that emotion down and tried to nail the sentence shut, but the emotion seeps through the cracks. But, the authors he loves always seem to actually be apathetic. Maybe I’m generalizing too much, but that’s how it seems to me from A Moveable Feast. I think this book is a good example of that. I hadn’t thought about it before, but it seems like it is entirely different to write a memoir where you treat your own story objectively and have compassion for your enemies, and another thing to be generally apathetic. And you don’t get the sense that a woman who flew across the Atlantic, before it was really the thing to do, would have been very apathetic. But, that is what I feel from the writing. Ambition, yes; competitive spirit, yes; but, passion? Not really. It is interesting because I am inclined to assume that Beryl Markham was one of the most passionate people in the twentieth century.There was another funny thing about this book. I don’t have it in front of me now or I would quote to you. She really back-loads her sentences. I think this might have been something that created the sense of apathy for me. I’m going to give an example of the kind of sentence I’m talking about, even though I don’t have the book, so I can’t give you a quote. It’s something like, “In the heat of the summer, when the warm breezes blew and people sat on their porches drinking lemonade, and before we had heard of airplanes, but after my father had started his flour processing plant, a stampede of elephants flattened our entire village.” It’s like, WHAT? WHOA. That sentence is not about the heat of summer. It is not easy for a stampede of elephants to sneak around, but they got into that sentence pretty stealthily. I guess it is sort of a litotes sentence structure, but I felt tossed about a little bit as a reader.I read this because my boss and I were talking about the Swahili coast, and how beautiful it is. Markham grew up there and learned to fly planes there. What a beautiful and rough and interesting place to live. Generally, I think this is a wonderful story. Over and over, I was stunned at how amazing this woman is. And, man, if there is anything that proves that women have always been badass, it is stories like this. I think, for people who love books like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Jeannette Walls's books, this is a great recommendation. You just get this sense that Markham did whatever the fuck she wanted to do, and she could not have cared less if someone told her not to. She just swatted them away and worked with more drive to get what she wanted. I am left with an unfortunate desire to read celebrity gossip about her, though. Who was the woman behind the legend? But, at the same time, I am glad at the dignity of the story, and I am unimpressed at my own unseemly dissatisfaction.
What do You think about West With The Night (1983)?
Markham led a remarkable life, and perhaps the coolest thing about this book is how utterly natural it seemed that she should be doing such extraordinary things. I get the feeling that she’d say, “well, of course I flew across the ocean” in the same way I might say, “well, of course I bought a doughnut.” Her descriptions of amazing events were, if not exactly full of humility, so lacking in bravado that even the most daring, outrageous tasks seemed totally natural. Beyond her fascinating experiences, Markham was also just a really good writer. Her stories were laced with a tight, wry sense of humor that was totally unexpected. Her accounts of horse racing, normally not something that would interest me, were just as captivating as her stories about flying supplies to remote villages. She evokes the African landscape with love and familiarity and, where warranted, wariness and respect. My one disclaimer – it’s an old book, and contains outdated sentiments and activities that range from uncomfortable to inappropriate. See Nina’s review for some excellent succinct thoughts on these parts of the book.
—Alexis
Someone in our book group commented, "This makes me feel like I live such a boring life." Also, it makes me feel like I don't work nearly hard enough.I remember my college roommate carrying this book around in the mid-1980s when she was taking flying lessons, and I was intrigued by it, but I have never read it. 25 years later, having seen Mombasa and Voi and the Rift Valley myself from the cockpit of a small plane, with a pilot's license in hand and several books about Africa behind me, having read just about every early aviator's autobiography and considering myself fairly knowledgeable on the subject of pioneering women pilots, it is UNBELIEVABLE that this is the first time I've read West with the Night. But it is.And I love it. Not so much for the sharing of a fantastic childhood of a European girl spearing boar with Nandi tribesmen, or for the incredible descriptions of sky and sea and desert as seen from the air, but for the occasional crystallization of things I feel deeply myself. Like this:'When you fly,' the young man said, 'you get a feeling of possession that you couldn't have if you owned all of Africa. You feel that everything you see belongs to you -- all the pieces are put together, and the whole is yours; not that you want it, but because, when you're alone in a plane, there's no one to share it. It's there and it's yours.'There is so much left out of this book -- so many personal details, the messy background of Beryl Markham's life that we hunger for in a biography, which of her companions she was in love with and what happened to her mother and children (I personally found myself wondering furiously what the heck she was doing in 1942, in East Africa or in Europe or wherever she was, in addition to publishing this book). I longed for pictures, for talismans, for the face of the young Beryl to pore over. There's nothing here but the carefully measured portion she chooses to give us. And yet I feel that she's painted a wonderful portrait of herself, told us how she feels about the world and many more important things than names and dates.It is very reminiscent of St. Exupéry, in philosophy and tone and style. I gather there is a rumor abroad that he may have helped her write it. I'm choosing to believe she wrote it herself. I mean, come on, guys. She flew the Atlantic herself.-------------------------------Best random adage, alleged quotation from Bror Blixen: "Life is life and fun is fun, but it's all so quiet when the goldfish die."
—Elizabeth
This is a fine read for the heroine and her adventurous life, and in general I do appreciate her style and the choice of internal depth throughout. Let me say as much at the start. I must say that about half way through I began to have mixed feelings, like Jeanette, about the style, especially about the long elegiac passages that often worked but sometimes did not, at least not for me. I was not hampered then by the feeling of what happens next, quite the contrary, but rather by the creeping overload of constant, predictable enigmas she throws out. Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate them, when they work, and many many do. True gems to fit the magnificent subjects, but others just sit there. I may be a lazy reader, but in fact I tend to relish these language devices.The ones that are added in for fun did catch me, even to ones like the following for a passing situation, such as the Hindi telegraph operators tapping and listening without stop: "I have no idea what they really talked about. Possibly I do the Babus an injustice, but I think at best they used to read the novels of Anthony Trollope to each other over the wire. The Babu at Makindu reeled off an impressive lot of dots and dashes before he looked up from his table" to answer her request for a message. The metaphorical smile in the verbs here, the dramatic moment for her, the timing are all perfect for the effect of this moment and the role of the telegraph. She does this with a lot of characters, even major ones like Arab Ruta, and I appreciated all, well not all. Got tired of the boasting drinking machos, but only at times. Oh yes, then the description of Balmy's special tick can't be ignored: "She was a little like the eccentric genius who, after being asked by his host why he had rubbed broccoli in his hair at dinner, apologized with a bow from the waist and said he had thought it was spinach." There are many such, as said, to the point where one feels privy to the energy in those long half drunken days out with gin or whatever in camp, on verandas, in the clubs, where she was clearly one of the ''boys'' in that African corner of the Empire. All in all, these deserve an extra star above, which I may add in time if this book ''stays'' with me long.In contrast, when at the beginning I sensed the poetry in the passages like the next one, they began to wear thin with use and became flatter, and not just because the last wide landscapes she does this with is the dessert flying north to England. She is much shorter over the Atlantic at the end, concentrating on herself and the plane, so it read well. But there were many before then, and I grew weary enough with them to skip over, for the most part. The back cover's photograph of the nose dive at the end of that flight was perfect. Now to the example:"In a sense it was formless. When the low stars shone over it and the moon clothed it in silver fog, it was the way the firmament must have been when the waters had gone and the night of the Fifth Day had fallen on creatures still bewildered by the wonder of their being. It was an empty world because no man had yet joined sticks to make a house or scratched the earth to make a road or embedded the transient symbols of his artifice in the clean horizon. But it was not a sterile world. It held the genesis of life and lay deep and anticipant under the sky."
—Joje
