I don't really see this a plug for
The Complete New Yorker as much as a note of praise for what I consider to be a fantastic idea - having all the New Yorkers ever printed! My Dad gave me the Complete New Yorker a few years ago and I haven't really used it since I read too much on my computer as it is. But when I was preparing my trip to Morocco, I got the grand idea to search for all things Morocco-related since the publication started in 1925. I printed out articles that looked interesting and didn't think much of it. The articles were the best travel guide I could have had with stories from war correspondents traveling in Fez, Casablanca and Tangier in the 1940's to an excellent three-part story about a child bride by
Jane Kramer in 1970. That was made even more rich by a follow on "personal history" she wrote in 1996 on feminism and how her time in the poor sections of Meknes affected her as a feminist thinker. There was a 1984 interview with King Hassan II and the last story I printed was on Paul Bowles and the 50-year anniversary of
The Sheltering Sky. Love this quote:
Many people fling the book aside half read, and no wonder. Submitting to "The Sheltering Sky" is like having a heart transplant without anesthesia: you have to be willing to contemplate, for a moment, how it feels to have no heart at all.
Travel guides are great for finding hotels, but there was something rare about the simple explanations about "exotic" Morocco written to
New Yorker readers over half a century ago.
From
Our Far-Flung Correspondents: The Hot Wind From the Desert, and article from March 15, 1952 on the play between Communism, the Istiqal (Independence) Party and other French and American interests shaping the future of Morocco:
As is the fashion nowadays, everybody is talking, sketchily but noisily, of democracy--probably in this instance hoping to get American support.
Some things seem to remain the same!
Posts
