Books

As I ponder why I brought certain, selected, books with me to Mexico, I don’t really have a good explanation. For whatever reason, various titles had a sentimental significance to me. I seemed to have a special fondness for the coffee-table species; to wit, the very tut-tut British, regrettably little-known Meet You at Raffles. Raymond Flower writes with barely concealed delight and nostalgia for the good/bad old days, presenting us with a popular history of the British Empire’s ultimate colonial hotel.

Flower’s pithy text, permeated throughout by a whiff of British old school superiority and ethnocentricity, is a total delight, but the real highlight of this tome is the collection of vintage photographs from the legendary hotel's glory years. There are pics of golden age and post-modern glitterati like Lord Mountbatten, Grace Kelly, Noel Coward, the cast of BBC’s Tenko, and, of course, the writer virtually synonymous with Raffles, W. Somerset Maugham. Also, building designs, panoramic vistas and more, but especially the plethora of - to current tastes, anyway - rather corny cartoons (maybe you have to be English to get them).

Another title with colonial overtones, Dutch this time (though to be sure the British have their say) is Winchester’s Krakatoa. The book has been praised to the skies [1], thus I have little original to add. However .... perhaps a few observations are in order. 

To begin, this book was admittedly not part of my personal collection but rather came my way through the good graces of the Mazatlán membership library, where I’m fortunate enough to have a subscription membership which entitles me to borrowing privileges. Anyway, I had already read Krakatoa a couple of times, sort of -- listened to, to be exact, a books on tape version which had the added benefit of the author’s mellifluous narrator’s voice.

But one of the mixed joys of the written version are the many footnotes which, as I recall, are omitted from the tape format. They give us a wealth of [almost too much] detail but they tend to interrupt rather than illuminate the narrative. Another minor quibble is that the author goes rather heavily into the technical aspects of geology. 

But ultimately one mustn’t grumble; the benefits include the very same detail, elegantly presented in smoothly flowing prose. Indeed, few books have so much texture, and many are the historical, cultural, scientific, political, and yes, even spiritual confluences and connections, in sometimes unlikely places. By way of two examples : erstwhile pulp author and movie tie-in specialist Michael Avalonne turns up as the author of the book which was adapted into the infamous 1969 film version Krakatoa: East of Java [2].  Also, by felicitous coincidence, I had the luck of a chance viewing, on the Ultimo network, of Krakatoa : The Last Days, the much less well known, but, in this writer’s estimate, far superior BBC sibling to the aforementioned Krakatoa, East of Java. The later film has a great dignity and authenticity, providing a harrowing flavor of how things must have been in and around the erupting volcano. Its special effects are pretty good too.

Another Mazatlán Library discovery, and a happy one at that, is Tony and Maureen Wheeler’s Unlikely Destinations : the Lonely Planet Story, which chronicles the improbable rise of a seat-of-the-pants publishing concern to a multi-billion(?) dollar company and arguably the world’s premier travel publisher. Among the joys of the present volume are the many color photographs and the fluid, non-pretentious writing style. But a particular pleasure for me was the memories of my own, idiosyncratic travels in Southeast Asia some quarter century ago [3], and especially relating to the book’s descriptions of similarly traversed locales. Sometimes even the same hotels showed up [4].

A minor weakness is that the book omits two features which are always strong in the Lonely Planet publications, an index and recommended readings. There’s also a paucity of maps. It all leaves one wondering how much editorial control the authors ultimately had over the final product.

[1] But even the most perspicacious of reviewers couldn’t have anticipated all the recent geologic goings on in Chile, New Zealand, Japan and elsewhere. Thus the text has a remarkable timeliness and prescience -- or does it? Author Winchester might argue that those in the tectonic know can always predict these things (up to a point), in the sense that they are ongoing and are bound to happen eventually. Geologic business as usual, so to speak. It’s just the where and when of very specific events that elude us. 

[2] It’s a little unclear whether the novel was written before, during or after the release of the film. And yes, it’s been much pointed out that Krakatoa is geographically east of Java. Finally, to be fair, a glance at Amazon and IMDB does reveal that the film indeed has its partisans, with particular praise going to the special effects.


[3] An Australasian variant of the Hippie Trail, if you will.


[4] A particularly memorable example being the infamous Chunking Mansions in Hong Kong.

[Flower, Raymond. Meet You at Raffles. Singapore, Kuala Lumpur : Times International Books. Revised edition, July 1987. First published in 1985 as Year of the Tiger. Author Flower’s loving tribute to the legendary hotel. Includes many vintage photos].

[Winchester, Simon. Krakatoa : the Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883. NewYork :  Perennial Edition, 2004. Originally published in Great Britain by Viking, 2003]. 


[Tony and Maureen Wheeler. Unlikely Destinations : the Lonely Planet Story. Singapore : Periplus, 2005. Distributed by Tuttle Publishing. "How two backpackers trekked across Asia-- and revolutionized the world of independent travel"--Cover].