BajaNomad - WHO WROTE THIS?

WHO WROTE THIS?

Marc - 9-28-2018 at 08:57 AM

THE Mexican BORDER
The border means more than a customs house, a passport office, a man with a gun. Over there everything is going to be different; life is never going to be quite the same again after your passport has been stamped and you find yourself speechless among the money-changers. The man seeking scenery imagines strange woods and unheard-of mountains; the romantic believes that the women over the border will be more beautiful and complaisant than those at home; the unhappy man imagines at least a different hell; the suicidal traveler expects a death he never finds. The atmosphere of the border - it is like starting over again; there is something about it like a good confession: poised for a few happy moments between sin and sin. When people die at the border they call it 'a happy death'.

[Edited on 9-28-2018 by Marc]

ehall - 9-28-2018 at 09:11 AM

I like it but I had to look up the word "complaisant" it's a long way from "complacent".

Marc - 9-28-2018 at 11:08 AM

Quote: Originally posted by ehall

I like it but I had to look up the word "complaisant" it's a long way from "complacent".

Sorry...you get an F. Hint: the author is British.

motoged - 9-28-2018 at 11:18 AM

Here is a source:
It is taken from a book:

Clandestino: In Search of Manu Chao
By Peter Culshaw

Marc - 9-28-2018 at 11:32 AM

Quote: Originally posted by motoged

Here is a source:
It is taken from a book:

Clandestino: In Search of Manu Chao
By Peter Culshaw

Nope

JoeJustJoe - 9-28-2018 at 11:40 AM

Graham Greene

BajaBill74 - 9-28-2018 at 11:45 AM

Marc.

rhintransit - 9-28-2018 at 01:12 PM

Graham Green wrote the first part. Although i don’t think
he referred to the Mexican border and the original quote has been added to I’m not at home where I could lookup more in my collection of quotes over the years

Marc - 9-28-2018 at 01:46 PM

Quote: Originally posted by rhintransit

Graham Green wrote the first part. Although i don’t think
he referred to the Mexican border and the original quote has been added to I’m not at home where I could lookup more in my collection of quotes over the years

'Another Mexico' by Graham Greene
He crossed the border into Mexico from Texas in 1938.

I added the heading myself.
It actually reads chapter one;

1. The Border
Across The River

[Edited on 9-28-2018 by Marc]

Beagle - 9-28-2018 at 03:27 PM

The Lawless Roads by Greene is a really good read. It's about his time in Chiapas. I read it in high school and it got me interested into doing some deep south Mexico exploration. As a result, I met a lot of Zapatistas. They were nice.

rhintransit - 9-28-2018 at 06:22 PM

Good info. Good read. Thanks

Skipjack Joe - 9-28-2018 at 07:53 PM

Quote: Originally posted by ehall

I like it but I had to look up the word "complaisant" it's a long way from "complacent".

I think he meant compliant.

chumlee57 - 9-28-2018 at 08:48 PM

I like your train of thought, I also focused on that particular part of the story, Compliant, complacent or complasiant women

Marc - 9-29-2018 at 07:06 AM

Quote: Originally posted by chumlee57

I like your train of thought, I also focused on that particular part of the story, Compliant, complacent or complasiant women

That's how it is spelled in the book. May be a Brit way of spelling.
theater=theatre color=colour , and so on.

Some authors will purposely miss spell a word or title. Hemingway for instance.

JoeJustJoe - 9-29-2018 at 08:17 AM

I win the contest!

But it's real easy to win, I just put the who paragraph in Google, where it would give me a few clues, and then narrowed it down until I came up with the name Graham Greene.

I never heard of Graham Greene, but he seemed like an interesting character, and I read a few brief excerpts from his book, and looked at what other said about him, but to me he comes off like another conflicted Gringo, living in a sexually repressed England a few decades removed from the Victorian age.

He comes to Mexico, as a white savior from the UK, to write about the new Mexican President/ government, wanting to go secular and anti-Catholic, which in my opinion, would have made Mexico, a better country, if they put the Catholic religion in the back seat.

So you have a Catholic, conservative, and depressive UK nut, tell a story about Mexico,in the Chiapas region in 1938 through his clouded lens.

This guy is a nut if he thinks there is a "romantic believes that the women over the border will be more beautiful and complaisant than those at home."( he is saying you really can't find beautiful and complaisant women in MX)

It's true, women over the border will be more beautiful, and more complaisant than those at home, in the UK or US. What is he crazy? Oh yeah, he suffered from depression.

This just tells me this is another nut coming to Mexico, to hook up with Mexican women, and it ended badly for him.

At the end of the day, Graham Greene, had a pathological hatred for Mexico and Mexicans, like so many I have come across thought the years, including a few on "Baja Nomad," but most are no longer here.

So I would't waste my time reading the rest of his book, at least not about Mexico.

[Edited on 9-29-2018 by JoeJustJoe]

mtgoat666 - 9-29-2018 at 08:35 AM

Quote: Originally posted by Marc

THE Mexican BORDER
The border means more than a customs house, a passport office, a man with a gun. Over there everything is going to be different; life is never going to be quite the same again after your passport has been stamped and you find yourself speechless among the money-changers. The man seeking scenery imagines strange woods and unheard-of mountains; the romantic believes that the women over the border will be more beautiful and complaisant than those at home; the unhappy man imagines at least a different hell; the suicidal traveler expects a death he never finds. The atmosphere of the border - it is like starting over again; there is something about it like a good confession: poised for a few happy moments between sin and sin. When people die at the border they call it 'a happy death'.
[Edited on 9-28-2018 by Marc]

That’s a melodramatic, syrupy, fantasy description of a border. I give it a thumbs down.

bill erhardt - 9-29-2018 at 09:02 AM

When I scroll through the threads on this site I often wonder why I bother. Threads like this one are the reason. When I ordered The Lawless Roads on Amazon I discovered a whole wealth of other books by Graham Greene I didn't realize had been Kindlized. Guess I'll keep coming back.....

Marc - 9-29-2018 at 11:24 AM

Quote: Originally posted by bill erhardt

When I scroll through the threads on this site I often wonder why I bother. Threads like this one are the reason. When I ordered The Lawless Roads on Amazon I discovered a whole wealth of other books by Graham Greene I didn't realize had been Kindlized. Guess I'll keep coming back.....

Published in America titled "Another Mexico' and in England 'The Lawlless Roads'. I have a 1982 copy. A fascinating look at Mexico 80 years ago.
I also have a copy of 'The Quiet American' I found in a shop in Hanoi.
Re the quotes above; I guess a five minute Google search makes one an expert on liturature?

JoeJustJoe - 9-29-2018 at 11:50 AM

Just because you have a copy of a book, doesn't make you an expert either.

You will be surprised of what you could find out in five minutes.

Green, admits to being depressed, and from my brief reading, it's a depressive and downer book, full of hatred towards Mexico, and Mexicans, in another era.

I will pass, because if I want to read about hatred towards Mexico, there are a lot of other places I could visit.
_________________________________

Here is a review of some of Green's writings about Mexico in 1939 from the New York Times:
_____________

A Lugubrious Traveler's View of Mexico

"Graveyard talk," scoffed the young English intellectual. "The boat can't be as bad as all that." But his very next sentence reads:

"It was. It was worse."

That epitomizes the whole book. Whatever Mr. Greene thought he would find bad in Mexico he found awful. Gloomily expecting nothing good for his dinner, he found that meal unspeakable. Foreseeing unpleasant smells, he inhaled atrocious stinks. Planning to leave an unpleasant town early next morning he was still there three days later. Natives, at first sight, merely passively unfriendly to visiting "gringoes," muttered fighting words at him as he strolled past. Swarms of mosquitoes, "with a terrifying steady hum like that of a sewing machine" singled him out for pressing and elaborate attentions.

Very soon after treading Mexican soil, he admits, he had learned to hate the country. Wherever he went ugliness stalked him and leered at him from things and beasts and humans. If he sought to escape it all by taking a walk he found "a rubbish dump stinking under the sanitary notice forbidding it." In his hotel he met "an unshaved malarial creature." A child

http://movies2.nytimes.com/books/00/02/20/specials/greene-me...

BajaBlanca - 9-30-2018 at 11:40 AM

My curiosity makes me want to read it!

Marc - 9-30-2018 at 03:02 PM

Quote: Originally posted by BajaBlanca

My curiosity makes me want to read it!

You have most likely seen movies made from his books. Just to name a FEW:
The Third Man
The Quiet American
Our Man In Havana
The Pride And The Passion

BajaBlanca - 9-30-2018 at 06:06 PM

None of the titles ring a bell. Which might mean my memory is lacking not that I haven't seen the movie!