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SOUTH OF THE CLOUDS

Name: SOUTH OF THE CLOUDS
Author: Bill Porter
ISBN: 978-1-61902-719-0

TRAVELS IN SOUTHWEST CHINA

by Bill Porter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 10, 2015

As satisfying as any trip by Paul Theroux but with a much less prickly and much more forgiving narrator.

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Journalist/translator and intrepid traveler Porter (Zen Baggage: A Pilgrimage to China, 2008, etc.) takes readers on another virtual journey into the China few Westerners know.

On his latest, Porter traveled to Yunnan, in southwestern China, a place opened to foreigners way back in Marco Polo’s day—courtesy of the invading Mongols, the author points out—but not much visited even so. The narrative opens in the frontier city of Wuchou, fairly new “as Chinese towns go,” having been built 1,400 years ago, “back in the T’ang dynasty, when the Chinese decided they needed a more permanent presence in order to control the trade goods that poured forth from that region.” The Chinese have been seeking to control the place ever since, as Porter quietly points out while traveling from one ethnic enclave to another, telling tales of amity and enmity. As a reporter, he’s a font of oddities, noting which towns are renowned for snake recipes, which cater to the tourist trade, and which are best avoided altogether. Mostly, he writes with good humor (“Kuelin…now featured the standard overpriced tourist facilities and services that catered to large tour groups, which were okay if you don’t mind being treated like a sheep”), and he’s inclined to laugh at himself for getting into odd situations—e.g., perched on a high cliff over the Yangtze River, with only himself to blame for the predicament. The book has a slightly scattershot feel, without the keen sense of goal and direction that marked Porter’s Road to Heaven (1993), but the journey is absorbing all the same, a tale of precarious mountain passes, forbidden borderlands, and mostly lovely people, to say nothing of a statue of a “two-foot-high vulva.”

As satisfying as any trip by Paul Theroux but with a much less prickly and much more forgiving narrator.

Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-61902-719-0

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Counterpoint

Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE SILK ROAD
by Bill Porter

- BOOK REVIEW
ZEN BAGGAGE
by Bill Porter

- BOOK REVIEW
ROAD TO HEAVEN
by Bill Porter

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

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Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.