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mythic french atoll Whenever I hear someone mention the island of Tahiti, three things immediately come to my mind and those would be Paul Gauguin, Mutiny on the Bounty and Captain Cook. So when Paul Theroux finally got to the island of Tahiti in his book The Happy Isles of Oceania, I was curious to see what he had to say. Well, in his own blunt if not cruel fashion he talked a great deal about Gauguin and how the artist reinvented the island to fit his fantasy of what should have been there. Instead of painting any of the French colonial life that was there when he was alive, he created landscapes that did not exist. Theroux then goes on to say that Gauguin wanted an island paradise full of naked native women and I suspect that this idea came from the crew of the Bounty and Cook's description of the place. Sadly those descriptions weren't true for very long. Waves of invading missionaries were determined to save these people who were in their opinion under the spell of original sin. Now I have never been that fond of the paintings of Gauguin. Over the years I've seen some of his work at the Art Institute in Chicago, but the color scheme always turned me off. It was too garish for my taste. From what I can remember there were dark skinned women posed in front of flat pink and or yellow landscapes. In my opinion these were not pleasing to the eye so I never looked more into why he painted the way that he did. I was much more into his contemporary Vincent Van Gogh. Now my opinion is starting to change. Despite my mixed feelings towards Theroux, I do have to thank him for expanding my knowledge of Gauguin. After probably five pages highlighting parts of his life, I'm curious to learn more about the man. Just those few samples were enough to catch my interest. Oh, there are the unsavory parts such as his predilection for thirteen year old girls, but I do still have to admire someone who left what was at the time the modern world in France for this remote island in the Pacific Ocean. I also learned that he had spent time in Central and South America as well. The man saw the world and that is something that I can always admire in someone. Theroux has also made me aware of how many people chose the islands of the Pacific as either a place to live or die. I had no idea that Robert Louis Stevenson spent his final years in Samoa. Nor did I know that Jack London had also spent some time in the South Pacific. Whenever I think of Jack London, I think of Alaska not the tropics. Then there were the writings of Somerset Maugham on the subject of the Pacific islands. All of this was new to me and I may have to sample some of what they wrote with Herman Melville's Typee at the top of the list. Naturally Theroux was not at all impressed with what he saw in Tahiti. He saw it as a place populated by a defeated people at the mercy of the French where everything is overpriced and being there clearly bothered him. Now his description of the place is probably true to some degree, but something must still attract tourists. This of course is overlooking the fact that the French prefer to do nuclear testing in that part of the world much to the dismay of other countries. I think that the biggest problem for Paul Theroux is that he wants to find some place where there aren't any people around yet he goes to these exotic locales that people want to see. Then when he does find his own private island to inhabit he wishes that he could share it with a woman. He never allows himself to be happy or if he does it never seems to last for that long. From my perspective he creates his own misery. Now that may make for some great writing, but trying to maintain that image has to be draining on a person. ... Early this afternoon I watched the Fellini film 8½ for the first time in probably a year if not longer. Each time I see the movie, I still shake my head. Parts of it make sense, but then there is the ending with the circus troupe that always bothers me. I can understand the director having an active imagination, but all of the earlier fantasy sequences seem more grounded to me or at the very least more serious. Then in the end all reality gets left behind and I think that I as a viewer am supposed to appreciate this change. I could be wrong of course since I've never read any literature on the film. I just knew that Woody Allen did homage to the very first few minutes of the film with his movie Stardust Memories. That small piece of information was enough to make me add it to my collection years ago and the image that always stays with me is the opening dream where Guido is a human kite. I have yet to see that done anywhere else. |