Right now I am about to start John Harrison’s “Off the map”, an account of an eccentric Englishman on an Amazonian journey. I am decidedly not in the mood for an English eccentric, particularly not if they are, as they do tend to be, not really eccentric at all, but just opinionated Anti-American liberal-lefties with no original thought in their head.
In Deorla Murphy’s foreword to Harrison’s “Off the Map” she writes “the Harrisons wanted to remain in touch with…life as it was lived…before technology rendered our survival skills redundant”.
This is utter rubbish. Technology has not rendered our survival skills redundant; it has only changed what those survival skills are. These people would reduce us to hunter-gatherers, and they should be stamped on from a great height!
Harrison writes of garampeiros (gold prospectors) “they are a different breed from the Brazilians who opt to stay at home. They are sharper, harder working, more adventurous and less tolerant of hierarchies and bureaucrats” [there is more.] This goes down to the heart of what R.A Heinlein writes, saying that those who emigrate are always better human beings than those who remain behind. This description of the Brazilian Amazon frontier is most instructive.
Harrison can surely write most excellent English, but he comes across as an a**ehole. I'd not want to meet him!
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