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sophia_sol) wrote2014-03-13 07:53 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2014-03-13 07:53 pm
Tschiffely's Ride, by A. F. Tschiffely
To find out why I chose to read this book you have to look backwards in my life QUITE A FEW YEARS. Like, a dozen years at LEAST. As a kid I had this book called "Horses Forever" by Lawrence Scanlan - it's a nonfiction book about why horses have so much appeal to people. I reread it a LOT for a few years, during my most horse-obsessed age. And in one part of Horses Forever there's reference made to Tschiffely's Ride, apparently in glowing enough terms that I remembered the name for a dozen years as something I wanted to read. Gosh. That is an IMPRESSIVE FEAT given the generally poor state of my memory!
Anyways, fast-forward those dozen or so years, and I was wandering a used bookstore and saw Tschiffely's Ride on a sale shelf for like one buck. I was immediately like SOLD and then I took it home and put it on my bookshelf and didn't touch it for several years. (I am SO GOOD at reading things on my to-read list...) But! Finally I have read it!
It's a nonfiction book written by a white dude in the 1930s who randomly decided he wanted to travel on horseback from where he was working in Buenos Aires, Argentina all the way to Washington DC, something everyone said wasn't doable. Because he was bored and wanted adventure. This trip involves a lot of deserts and mountains and other such fun things. It took him 2 1/2 years. And he wrote this book after his successful completion of the journey!
One of the first things that struck me upon beginning to read this book is the the bits and pieces of snark. Somehow I was not expecting that! White dude going on a Dangerous Manly Adventure Because Reasons is not a genre where I expect this kind of humour. I mean, there didn't end up being a whole lot of this in the book, but there WAS a bit, and I appreciated it.
The book was clearly of its era in terms of racism. There was a lot of casual thoughtless racism. And every now and then there would be a shining beam of light where Tschiffely had some actual thoughts about the poor treatment of the native population by white people, and so forth, and I would get all excited, GO YOU, YOU NOTICED SOMETHING WAS RACIST, but then it would fall back into same old same old again. Sigh.
Actually the book is -ist in a number of areas: classist, racist, sexist, sizeist, and so forth. Again, about the levels I would expect from a well-off white dude of his era - so, frustrating but nothing surprising.
Tschiffely also clearly had no idea of his own privilege, viewing his excellent treatment as obviously something that was going to happen, and having no compunction at taking extra lengths for the treatment he knew he deserved (eg if the local authorities kick up a stink about him carrying firearms he is happy to trick them into thinking he has the appropriate license for that country when he actually doesn't).
But overall it was still a very interesting book, competently written, and I do appreciate that Tschiffely spent a lot of the trip in very uncomfortable and/or dangerous situations but never gets dramatic or "woe is me" about it. He approaches everything he experienced with a sort of good-humoured equanimity.
In the end I think I'm glad I didn't try to read it when I was a kid, because I don't think I would have found it interesting - there isn't enough horsy content in the book to have satisfied young me. I also wouldn't have noticed Tschiffely's prejudices beyond the most obvious and would probably have taken everything he said to be objective truth. And no, this book doesn't live up to the expectations I'd built up about it over the years. But I'm glad to have finally read it nonetheless.
(really if I want to read racist arrogant travelogues I should just get around to finally reading Richard Burton's account of his trip to Mecca, because it is hard to beat Richard Burton in racist arrogance.)
Anyways, fast-forward those dozen or so years, and I was wandering a used bookstore and saw Tschiffely's Ride on a sale shelf for like one buck. I was immediately like SOLD and then I took it home and put it on my bookshelf and didn't touch it for several years. (I am SO GOOD at reading things on my to-read list...) But! Finally I have read it!
It's a nonfiction book written by a white dude in the 1930s who randomly decided he wanted to travel on horseback from where he was working in Buenos Aires, Argentina all the way to Washington DC, something everyone said wasn't doable. Because he was bored and wanted adventure. This trip involves a lot of deserts and mountains and other such fun things. It took him 2 1/2 years. And he wrote this book after his successful completion of the journey!
One of the first things that struck me upon beginning to read this book is the the bits and pieces of snark. Somehow I was not expecting that! White dude going on a Dangerous Manly Adventure Because Reasons is not a genre where I expect this kind of humour. I mean, there didn't end up being a whole lot of this in the book, but there WAS a bit, and I appreciated it.
The book was clearly of its era in terms of racism. There was a lot of casual thoughtless racism. And every now and then there would be a shining beam of light where Tschiffely had some actual thoughts about the poor treatment of the native population by white people, and so forth, and I would get all excited, GO YOU, YOU NOTICED SOMETHING WAS RACIST, but then it would fall back into same old same old again. Sigh.
Actually the book is -ist in a number of areas: classist, racist, sexist, sizeist, and so forth. Again, about the levels I would expect from a well-off white dude of his era - so, frustrating but nothing surprising.
Tschiffely also clearly had no idea of his own privilege, viewing his excellent treatment as obviously something that was going to happen, and having no compunction at taking extra lengths for the treatment he knew he deserved (eg if the local authorities kick up a stink about him carrying firearms he is happy to trick them into thinking he has the appropriate license for that country when he actually doesn't).
But overall it was still a very interesting book, competently written, and I do appreciate that Tschiffely spent a lot of the trip in very uncomfortable and/or dangerous situations but never gets dramatic or "woe is me" about it. He approaches everything he experienced with a sort of good-humoured equanimity.
In the end I think I'm glad I didn't try to read it when I was a kid, because I don't think I would have found it interesting - there isn't enough horsy content in the book to have satisfied young me. I also wouldn't have noticed Tschiffely's prejudices beyond the most obvious and would probably have taken everything he said to be objective truth. And no, this book doesn't live up to the expectations I'd built up about it over the years. But I'm glad to have finally read it nonetheless.
(really if I want to read racist arrogant travelogues I should just get around to finally reading Richard Burton's account of his trip to Mecca, because it is hard to beat Richard Burton in racist arrogance.)