The Saddest Pleasure : A Journey on Two Rivers - Hardcover

Moritz Thomsen

4.17

148 ratings by Goodreads

9780712647090: The Saddest Pleasure : A Journey on Two Rivers

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0712647090 ISBN 13: 9780712647090

Publisher: Sumach Press, 1991

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The Saddest Pleasure

The Saddest Pleasure is a deeply personal look at the people, poverty, beauty, art, music, literature, and passion of South America by an American who has spent most of his life there.

Moritz Thomsen was one of the early Peace Corps volunteers. Through his skill as a writer he vividly brings to life the people and landscapes he loves. The Saddest Pleasure tells the story of Thomsen's desperate departure from Ecuador at the age of sixty-three and his soul-searching journey through Brazil and the Amazon River. Along the way the author reflects on the meaning of his own life and the world around him, his friendships, and on the distances between people and cultures.

Thomsen's spirited observations are tinged with irascibility, as he moves from city to feudal countryside, from primitive conditions to the startlingly contemporary details of a culture in transition.

Paul Theroux's introduction to this book is a testament to Mr. Thomsen's remarkable life.

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About the Author:

Moritz Thomsen, born in 1915, lives now in Guayaquil, Ecuador. He served as a bombardier in the eighth Air Force During World War II. At the age of 48 he became one of the early Peace Corps volunteers. His first book, Living Poor, chronicles his four-year Peace Corps experience of living in a small fishing village in Ecuador in the 1960s. He returned to Ecuador after leaving the Peace Corps to become a farmer on the Esmeraldas River, an experience he describes in The Farm on the River of Emeralds. He continues to travel and live in South America.

From Library Journal:

All travel narratives are self-revealing to some extent, but few go as far as this one. The author was a 1960s Peace Corp Volunteer in Ecuador who stayed on in an attempt to farm. (His account of his farming experience appeared in The Farm on the River of Emeralds, LJ 7/78). When that eventually fell through, Thomsen took a trip to Rio and up the Amazon River, which is the backdrop for this book. The author is an introspective, tormented, and bitter man, and he tells us much more about his failures and his struggles to face old age (he was 63 at the time of writing this) and death than many readers will want to know. Nonetheless, he is a brilliant writer, and in the process he gives us a view of South America that balances the more conventional travel writing and political commentary generally available.
- Harold M. Otness, Southern Oregon State Coll. Lib., Ashland
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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