Customer Reviews

The Saddest Pleasure: A Journey on Two Rivers (Graywolf Memoir)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Thomsen writes of traveling through Brazil and on the Amazon while remembering his unrecon-ciled struggle with his father and his hard ten years living poor on a farm in Ecuador. This is one of the very best books I have read, and I am 78! That Paul Theroux is his friend and wrote the Inro is one more recommendation.

Having read Living Poor, Farm on the River of Emeralds and Journey of Two Rivers, I savored every line, every word of Thomsen's last work. What beautiful insight, honesty, and soul. My favorite narrative, perhaps ever.

This is the kind of book one is reluctant to continue reading, because each session brings one closer to the end, and thus closer to the end of its startling epiphanies and immeasurable riches. A sad pleasure indeed

I had this book for over ten years before I finally sat down to read it recently, at home from work with a cold. I quickly became engrossed in it to the point where I had a hard time putting it down. Thomsen's writing is superb. He weaves his personal story of early psychic hurt at the hands of his father and eccentric family into an exploration of global woes and human suffering, all the while with truly beautiful language. Alternately funny, gross, awful and awe-inspiring, you will come away dazzled, moved and yes, shaken by the vividness of his images and the depth of his understanding of the human condition. It is one of those rare books that transcends its own story line to show you a window onto our world of great clarity and understanding on issues like the economics of class, the gulfs between cultures, exploitation and poverty, the meaning of beauty, and the individual's struggle to find meaning in a chaotic world. In the end, you're not sure where you have gone, whether to Ecuador, Brazil, or on your own inner journey of discovery that you've unsuspectingly embarked on without ever leaving your room.

There are many reasons why I loved this book. There were sentences that astonished me, word-craft simple precise and searing. Paragraphs of description that somehow tied in a view, a history, and a personality with succinct power. Moritz did have a somewhat dour outlook on life and plenty of reason for it. His gift was to write of it with his personal life journey and to embilish his world view with the great connections of history,literature, music and a empathy for the poor, disadvantaged, and struggling people of South America.

He also is able to write of situations that leave me laughing hysterically as in the "despidida", the family ritual of mourning the departing traveler where the "male members of this tragic group, the uncles, the brothers, the godfathers, stand at the fringes. They stare at the floor, take deep drags on their cigarettes, and clench and unclench the muscles in their jaws. They are just a few seconds away from a total breakdown that would destroy forever the macho image they have spent a lifetime cultivating". I read another scene to my son about Moritz's avoidance of foods from the roadside stall that had me laughing so hard that I struggled to continue reading.

Moritz's first two books, "Living Poor" and "Farm on the River of Emeralds" also great books, were rooted in place in Esmeraldas Province of Ecuador. In "The Saddest Pleasure" he has left that place, left poverty in the village of his Peace Corps service and the farm he started with his Ecuadorian partner. In this book he faces the end of his life, returning to a "bourgeois" fate and begins this journey not knowing that it will redefine his life.

It may be helpful but not necessary to read Moritz's first two books before this. In the "Saddest Pleasure" Moritz expounds not only on poverty and place but more on what life is for, what life has become. I found the first two books to be much easier to assimilate than this but this again is richer and I will be sure to read it again.

I highly recommend this book to all avid readers I know.

This is the only book which, having just completed reading, I have immediately reread.

Well you've found your way here to reviews of Moritz Thomsen's amazing travel book "Saddest Pleasure" - if you haven't read this you are just a slight movement away from the sweetest most poignant travelogue you've ever encountered. I've been reading traveler's tales for decades and this one ranks at the top of my list. I've read travel authors from Marco Polo to Paul Theroux to Michael Palin, to Herman Mellville and Pierre Loti writing about their sojourns in the South Seas... I read and loved Nick Danziger, Thor Heyerdahl and James Michener... and more, many more... too many to list. Moritz Thomsen's "Saddest Pleasure" tops my list of favorites. I first read it in the early nineties when I was in my mid forties and it stunned me then. Now that I am the same age as Thomsen was when he authored this and now I am a bit of a traveller as well, finding myself thousands of miles from home, alone among stragers, I just repurchased this book so I could experience it again. I still own my original copy but it's packed away in a box thousands of miles from here, so I bought another. So friend, - IF your finger is hovering over the "buy" button please allow me to urge you... don't hesitate. Reading this book will touch you in some deep ways. By all means - do not pass this one by. Thomsen shares tales of his travels both external and internal. He possessed a wonderful gift for personal observation and insight. Not to be missed.

I liked the descriptions of river life; the leaves of plants, intricate flowers, the patch of sky, the dark soils, the quiet hillside, the jungle bacteria and fungi that grow on your body, the sound of a mango falling to the ground at night, and hungry, poor, dangerous people creeping around the farm. I liked the aimless walks through Brazilian cities such as Rio, Bahia, and Belem. I appreciated Thomsen's isolation from pretty much everyone, his inability to speak Portuguese or communicate well, and his sense of failure at life. I appreciated his openness to experience, perception, and courage to be the animal that suffers and works. Faced with Ramon's "you don't belong here" he realizes we are all being pushed out, there is no safe place. The man who works the land owns the land. Be a farmer. Enjoyable reading. Thanks!

I found out about Thomsen from a Paul Theroux reference and like many of Theroux's references to other writers and books, this turned out to be a winner. It's the story of an expatriate, perhaps running from his father, or looking for life's answer, joins the Peace Corps at the age of 48. After leaving the Corps, he remains in Ecuador and scrapes out a living on a farm. After being forced off the farm by a younger co-worker, Thomsen embarks on a journey that takes him to Brazil and the Amazon basin. The journey is described from the poor travler's point of view with many sad recollections of his life.

I had heard neither of book nor author when I unexpectedly received this book from a friend. She mentioned its being a book which presented a strong sense of place. It is indeed that, but rather more as well. Moritz Thomsen lived in Ecuador for a number of years, but then, for various reasons, launched on an extended voyage around Brazil, from Rio up the coast, around to Bélem, and then along the Amazon to Manaus. The real voyage, however, was along the twisted, frazzled byways of his soul, a journey so painful that no physical hardship could rival it. Thomsen is no doubt a good writer, because the ultimate picture we get is exactly the one he saw---peering out at Brazil through the miasmic forests of his excruciating memories. We meet a few strange or pathetic characters---but very few, mostly other foreigners---we view Brazil through his jaded, pessimistic lens, and most of all we delve into his past. He takes us along two rivers---the Amazon in a boat, and a jungle river in western Ecuador in his mind---but there is no retrieving him from the tangled mess of an awful life. The book is excellently constructed, it is honest in the style of Tobias Wolff, it has riveting descriptions of nature and of a life among poor Ecuadorians that few outsiders, save Peace Corps Volunteers, might ever have known. Thomsen understands and describes very accurately the deep exploitation of millions of people in Latin America, an oppresion that is nearly impossible to break, given the policies of rich countries. But ultimately, how you like this book is going to depend on your own personality, your own taste in tragedy. Thomsen starts with a quotation from Paul Theroux about travel being the saddest of pleasures. I felt that Thomsen did not prove the point. He is a man who spent most of his life rejecting everything that he could have been, everything that his arrogant, abusive father wanted him to be. He accomplished very little, made a total mess out of his life, had no (visible)lasting relationships, and at last came to a vague realization in his sixties that he was a 'writer'. I doubt if he can ever escape from the clutches of his long-dead father---will he ever be able to write anything beyond that endless battle ? Describing his life was no doubt the saddest of his pleasures and reading it, for some people, may be labelled a close second. In a way, I wish I had not read THE SADDEST PLEASURE. I prefer my pleasures separate from my tragedies and while such separation is not always possible, I do not savor the juxtaposition.