Modern Library Top 100 Non-Fiction Books of the 20th Century (58)
I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong
Hills. The equator runs across these highlands, a
hundred miles to the North, and the farm lay at
an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time
you felt that you had got high up, near to the sun,
but the early mornings and evenings were limpid
and restful, and the nights were cold.
-Isak Dinesen, Out
of Africa
Why is it do you suppose, that these should be among the most moving
and recognizable opening lines in all of literature? I used to think
that they lingered in memory just because of the creepy way that Meryl
Streep recites them in the
movie. But even contemporaneous reviews often mentioned their
haunting quality. I think that ultimately it must be because the
book is so specifically about a unique time and place and that this introduction
serves to place us there so completely. That after all is what makes
the book special, the way that it captures, in minute detail, the brief
moment of Colonial splendor in Kenya and turns it into something out of
a fairy tale.
Of course, we now know that Isak Dinesen's version of this colony is
in fact more mythical than factual--that she was actually Karen Blixen,
that in reality the husband who is virtually nonexistent in these pages
gave her venereal disease, that Hatton-Finch was not just a buddy but a
lover and that the natives, for all her seeming love and respect for them,
probably would not appreciate the way she continually compares them to
animals. And it is because we know all these things that a book which
when it was written seemed merely elegiac now seems truly deluded.
But despite all that we've learned in the intervening years, it remains,
on it's own terms, a beautiful and heartrending book. I actually
prefer Beryl Markham's similar but superior African memoir West With
the Night (1941) (read Orrin's
review, Grade: A+), but this one's well
worth reading too.
(Reviewed:04-May-00)
Grade: (B+)
Websites:
Book-related and General Links:
-Isak
Dinesen/Karen Blixen (kirjasto)
-ENCYCLOPAEDIA
BRITANNICA: Your search: "isak dinesen"
-Karen Blizen
Museum (Rungstedlund, Denmark)
-Karen
Blixen Museum (National Museums of Kenya)
-Rungstedlund
Foundation (Garden & Bird Sanctuary)
-Karen Blixen
- Isak Dinesen Information Site
-Karen
Blixen Literary Society Online
-BABETTE'S
FEAST (essays, links, etc.)
-1938:
OUT OF AFRICA by Isak Dinesan (Book of the Month Club)
-Karen
Blixen/Isak Dinesen (Post-Colonial Studies at Emory)
-Karen
Blixen (Isak Dinesen) (WebQuest Projects English 243: Introduction
to the Short Story)
-ARTICLE:
DINESON A BIG SELLER AGAIN WITH FILM TIE-IN (EDWIN McDOWELL, NY Times)
-REVIEW:
of ON MODERN MARRIAGE And Other Observations. By Isak Dinesen. Translated
by Anne Born (Susan Gubar, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
Jane Kramer: The Eighth Gothic Tale, NY Review of Books
WORKS DISCUSSED IN THIS
ESSAY
Out of Africa a film by
Sydney Pollack and screenplay by Kurt Luedtke
Out of Africa and Shadows
on the Grass by Isak Dinesen
Seven Gothic Tales by Isak
Dinesen
Winter's Tales by Isak Dinesen
The Angelic Avengers by
Isak Dinesen
Last Tales by Isak Dinesen
Anecdotes of Destiny and
Ehrengard by Isak Dinesen
Letters from Africa: 1914-1931
by Isak Dinesen
Daguerrotypes and Other
Essays by Isak Dinesen and foreword by Hannah Arendt
Isak Dinesen: The Life of
a Storyteller by Judith Thurman
West with the Night by Beryl
Markham
The Pact: My Friendship
with Isak Dinesen by Thorkild Bjornvig
The Flame Trees of Thika
by Elspeth Huxley
On the Edge of the Rift:
Memories of Kenya by Elspeth Huxley
White Mischief by James
Fox
Silence Will Speak: A Study
of the Life of Denys Finch Hatton by Errol Trzebinski
The Kenya Pioneers by Errol
Trzebinski
Longing for Darkness: Kamante's
Tales from Out of Africa collected by Peter Beard
-REVIEW:
of ISAK DINESEN The Life of a Storyteller. By Judith Thurman (Margaret
Drabble, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of ISAK DINESEN: The Life of a Storyteller, by Judith Thurman (Anatole
Broyard, NY Times)
-REVIEW:
Rosemary Dinnage: Gothic Sibyl, NY Review of Books
Silence Will Speak: A Study
of the Life of Denys Finch Hatton and His Relationship with Karen Blixen
by Errol Trzebinski
Isak Dinesen's Art: The
Gayety of Vision by Robert Langbaum
The Angelic Avengers by
Isak Dinesen
Carnival: Entertainments
and Posthumous Tales by Isak Dinesen
-REVIEW:
Jean Stafford: Lioness, NY Review of Books
Titania: The Biography of
Isak Dinesen by Parmenia Migel
-REVIEW:
Neal Ascherson: Taping Friday, NY Review of Books
Longing for Darkness: Kamante's
Tales From Out of Africa collected by Peter Beard
-REVIEW:
of Out of Isak Dinesen in Africa: Karen Blixen's Untold Story by Linda
Donelson (Linda Richards, January Magazine)
-ESSAY:
ISAK DINESEN IN AMERICA (SARA STAMBAUGH)
-ESSAY:
'SEVEN GOTHIC TALES': THE DIVINE SWANK OF ISAK DINESEN (John
Updike, NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY:
Culture, Cultivation, and Colonialism in Out of Africa and Beyond
(Simon Lewis, Research in African Literatures 31.1 )
-ESSAY:
The top 10 travel books of the century: The Modern Library's nonfiction
list egregiously ignores travel literature. We redress the oversight. (DON
GEORGE, Salon)
FILM:
-INFO:
Out of Africa (1985)(Internet Movie DataBase)
-BUY
IT: DVD (Amazon)
-BUY
IT: VHS (Amazon)
GENERAL:
-Sites
on Women Writers
If you liked Out of Africa, try:
Boyd, William
-An
Ice-Cream War
Bartle, Bull
-The White Rhino Hotel (1992)
Fox, James
-White Mischief : The Murder of Lord Erroll
Markham, Beryl (1902-1986)
-West
With the Night (1941) (read Orrin's review, Grade: A+)
Watkins, Paul
-In
the Blue Light of African Dreams
Wood, Barbara
-Green
City in the Sun
Comments:
Orrin welcomes reader comments on his reviews.
Add yours here.
i suppose it doesn't really matter if you graduate , one can always read a book at nyu. bye
- lancetrad
- Oct-15-2003, 20:58
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