Saturday February 10, 2007

From the four corners...

To celebrate their sixteeth anniversary the Penguin group publish a load of small books priced at sixty pence each. This once This one is written by Jan Morris who wrote an excellent book I discussed before . This is also a travel book written about her experiences in four cities in the world; New York, Delhi, Sydney and Vienna. Each is writen in a different style.

The Islander: Manhattan written in 1979 is the first her writing it on her twenty fifth concecutive visit. She starts the story describing a faint white blob in the centre of Central Park that is the Polar bears in the park. AS the park is said to be in the centre of the city she calls him the Central New Yorker. She reckons the locals are a crazy people, one example she gives - among many is a woman taking a bath fully clothed outside the Time Life building and she says no one no one was looking at her at all. The park itself is described as a scene of danger - with gloomy hillocks threadbare and desolate prairies. She is scathing over its reputation as a Global City only London, Paris can claim that she says. Finally she claims New York has lost its vision/ ruthless opportunism but the city is completed now well it was in 1979 until...

Next is Delhi. As Jan is being driven around by a taxi driver she observed to him that in the next world she would be driving and he would be in the back seat. He replied they would both be in the back seat.. nice bit of irony. However bringing that remark up to date I would say the rest of the world will be doing the driving and the Chinese will be in the back seat.. She says this is the capital of the loosing streak every day in the newspaper everyday is some tale of disaster bad news etc but successes are there just hidden by the problems that hit the headlines. It cannot being that badly as a country as at the time of writing it was number ten in the GNP rankings. Several helpful government officials were asked questions and none ever replied - but were always friendly! Her final statement is that Delhi has not changed much over its history to the common person on the street nothing has changed its just the rich folks who see the difference - maybe like any place on earth.

I will write up the last two cities from the book at a later date..