Out of Africa

September 6, 2010 at 9:43 pm (Reviews)

This summer I had the blessing of large open spaces of time and no required German reading on my list.  This gave me the first chance that I’ve had in years to really delve into a lot of books.  The problem, which is not really a problem at all, is that when you read literature for your living you don’t actually feel like picking it up after work.  During the school year if I read for pleasure it is simple, purely escapist fare.  This summer, however, I had no required literature on my plate and so I had the chance to ravenously devour book after book to my heart’s content.

The last two books in the long line of works that I swept through were Out of Africa and The Catcher in the Rye.  Careful readers of the blog will remember that I’m a huge Salinger fan and so Catcher was a re-read, brought on by Out of Africa, because a short way into Out of Africa I seemed to remember Holden reading it in Catcher.  I trolled through to find the point where he did, and then found myself sitting on the floor in my book closet pouring over the book again.

I read the two works over the last month or so like this; one flowing into the other.   The two of them breathing in unison.  The beautiful entrancing prose of Isak Dinesen somehow met its match in the intimate, casual babblings of Holden Caulfield.  I’d like to write a review of both, though to write a review of The Catcher in the Rye would be like writing a review of Goethe–it’s kind of been done a thousand million times before.  So I’m focusing on Out of Africa which has only been done a hundred million times before, but don’t be surprised when I pepper in a few quotes from Salinger.  I will say, briefly, that this time around I was struck by how empathetic Holden is and how beautifully Salinger portrays the joys of spending time with a child.  They aren’t related; they only both really hit me this time around.

I had a read a few short stories of Isak Dinesen’s before and I had seen the iconic film version of this book, but neither really prepared me for what I was reading.   It is quite different from the film, much more a true memoir in which small episodes follow each other, not without a plan, but necessarily along a plot .  Certainly the bulk of the love story is only hinted at.  What really got me was her beautiful description of her life in Africa.  Written years after her return to Europe, there is such a deep longing and melancholy in her description that really drew me in.  She is not only describing a place, but a time in her life, perhaps the best time of her life.  She picks up on the beauty of the landscape, but more importantly how it made her feel.  This line really hit it home for me: “The chief feature of the landscape, and of your life in it, was the air. . . . Up in this high air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart.  In the highlands you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be” (Dinesen 4).

I have never been to Kenya or anywhere in Africa, though I’ve always wanted to go, and I was transported by this book.  Like those posters you see in children’s libraries where some bespectacled kid is riding on an elephant while reading a book with his mouth wide open.   That’s truly how I felt reading it.   I had it with me when I was in Boston, which was awesome, and had poison ivy up and done both my arms, which was awful, and it could actually make me forget both my location and my condition.  I liked to imagine all the people like me reading it in their backyards or on the beach or at their lunch break at work, all taken on a fascinating safari half way across the world together.

Even Holden Caulfield takes the trip in Catcher. The line I was looking for is in the third chapter and goes like this: “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish that the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.  I wouldn’t mind calling this Isak Dinesen up.”   (Salinger 18) This was another aspect that drew me in.  She describes so much more than just what she saw and did, but mostly what she felt.  It begins almost euphorically, but as you read on you begin to feel the melancholy.  I read in a review somewhere that she is mourning in the book not only for her loss, but also the world’s, as Nairobi became more and more westernized.  The Africa she describes no longer exists anywhere except in her own words.  And I felt that I was sitting drinking a cup of tea with her and sharing in the burden.

I finished the two books one right after the other on a beautiful breezy summer day at the end of August.  I finished Catcher last and I thought the last line was frankly fitting for both.  ”It’s funny.  Don’t ever tell anybody anything.  If you do, you start missing everybody” (Salinger 214).  And already I’m back to school and missing all the friends I made in my summer of books.