Vintage Departures
9 total works
One of the best travel writers now at work in the English language brings back the sights and sounds from a dozen different frontiers. A cryptic encounter in the perfumed darkness of Bali; a tour of a Bolivian prison, conducted by an enterprising inmate; a nightmarish taxi ride across southern Yemen, where the men with guns may be customs inspectors or revolutionaries–these are just three of the stops on Pico Iyer’s latest itinerary.
But the true subject of Sun After Dark is the dislocations of the mind in transit. And so Iyer takes us along to meditate with Leonard Cohen and talk geopolitics with the Dalai Lama. He navigates the Magritte-like landscape of jet lag, “a place that no human had ever been until forty or so years ago.” And on every page of this poetic and provocative book, he compels us to redraw our map of the world.
But the true subject of Sun After Dark is the dislocations of the mind in transit. And so Iyer takes us along to meditate with Leonard Cohen and talk geopolitics with the Dalai Lama. He navigates the Magritte-like landscape of jet lag, “a place that no human had ever been until forty or so years ago.” And on every page of this poetic and provocative book, he compels us to redraw our map of the world.
Pico Iyer went to Kyoto and lived in a monastery for a time. He wanted to learn about Zen Buddhism and Japan and he wanted to get to know Kyoto. In Kyoto he met Sachiko, a typical bourgeois housewife locked into an arranged marriage. This is the story of Kyoto, Sachiko and the monk. The author also wrote "Video Night In Kathmandu".
In Tropical Classical the author of Video Nights in Katmandu and The Lady and the Monk visits a holy city in Ethiopia, where hooded worshippers practice a Christianity that has remained unchanged since the Middle Ages. He follows the bewilderingly complex route of Bombay's dabbawallahs, who each day ferry 100,000 different lunches to 100,000 different workers.
Iyer chats with the Dalai Lama and assesses the books of Salman Rushdie and Cormac McCarthy. And he brings his perceptive eye and unflappable wit to bear on the postmodern vogues for literary puffery, sexual gamesmanship, and frequent-flier miles. Glittering with aphorisms, overflowing with insight, and often hilarious, Tropical Classical represents some of Iyer's finest work.
Iyer chats with the Dalai Lama and assesses the books of Salman Rushdie and Cormac McCarthy. And he brings his perceptive eye and unflappable wit to bear on the postmodern vogues for literary puffery, sexual gamesmanship, and frequent-flier miles. Glittering with aphorisms, overflowing with insight, and often hilarious, Tropical Classical represents some of Iyer's finest work.
When Pico Iyer began his travels, he wanted to know how Rambo conquered Asia. Why did Dire Straits blast out over Hiroshima, Bruce Springsteen over Bali and Madonna over all? If he was eager to learn where East meets West, how pop-culture and imperialism penetrated through the world's most ancient civilizations, then the truths he began to uncover were more startling, more subtle, more complex than he ever anticipated. Who was hustling whom? When did this pursuit of illusions and vested interests, with its curious mixture of innocence and calculation, turn from confrontation into mating dance? Iyer travelled to Bali where, despite its notoriously spoiling tourism, he realized that Paradise might not be lost after all. China, trumpeting its first case of AIDS, was throwing open doors of trade with breathless courtesy. The ragged population of the Philippines at the end of the Marcos era sang along to "We are the World" in sight of US military installations. Burma, in its efforts to lock out the modern world, had locked in the Raj, and in Hong Kong a crowded new multinational empire of industrial Yuppies was poised to rule the future.
In the land where movies and politics respond to the same need for mythical figures, the movie star had become a god and Rajiv Gandhi a celluloid hero. The Japanese were in the midst of a baseball craze, but only in order to demonstrate that, as with Western technology, the game can be played more efficiently in the land of the Rising Yen. Iyer introduces a wide variety of individuals and the reader discovers the seductions and ironies of today's Asian culture - and of our own.
In the land where movies and politics respond to the same need for mythical figures, the movie star had become a god and Rajiv Gandhi a celluloid hero. The Japanese were in the midst of a baseball craze, but only in order to demonstrate that, as with Western technology, the game can be played more efficiently in the land of the Rising Yen. Iyer introduces a wide variety of individuals and the reader discovers the seductions and ironies of today's Asian culture - and of our own.
Pico Iyer is a traveller who particularly likes places that the rest of us would make a point of avoiding. This is a book about such places 'lonely places' as Iyer calls them 'the places that don't fit in'. Here is Iyer in North Korea (It had seemed, at the time, a good idea') in Argentina (five national economic plans in eight months and a 600% bank interest); in Cuba (where the hotel in Holguin offered only beer for breakfast); in Iceland (where the rock formation in the Westman Isles formerly known as Cleopatra is now known as Marge Simpson. ); in Bhutan and Vietnam and Australia. With the same wit he showed in VIDEO NIGHT IN KATHMANDU, Iyer illuminates the oddities of these places. His world is unlike anybody else's - and irresistable.
In the global village that our world has become, travel and technology fuel each other and us. "Everywhere is made up of everywhere else," motion is our most constant state of being, our very souls have been put into circulation. Yet, as Pico Iyer points out in this work, even a global person must have a home. Using his own multicultural upbringing (Indian, American, British) as a point of departure, Iyer sets out on a journey - both physical and psychological - toward a definition of home in this world gone mobile.
“Arguably the greatest living travel writer” (Outside magazine), Pico Iyer has called Japan home for more than three decades. But, as he is the first to admit, the country remains an enigma even to its long-term residents. In A Beginner’s Guide to Japan, Iyer draws on his years of experience—his travels, conversations, readings, and reflections—to craft a playful and profound book of surprising, brief, incisive glimpses into Japanese culture. He recounts his adventures and observations as he travels from a meditation hall to a love hotel, from West Point to Kyoto Station, and from dinner with Meryl Streep to an ill-fated call to the Apple service center in a series of provocations guaranteed to
pique the interest and curiosity of those who don’t know Japan—and to remind those who do of its myriad fascinations.
pique the interest and curiosity of those who don’t know Japan—and to remind those who do of its myriad fascinations.
Pico Iyer has been engaged in conversation with the Dalai Lama (a friend of his father's) for the last three decades - a continuing exploration of his message and its effectiveness. Now, in this insightful, impassioned book, Iyer captures the paradoxes of the Dalai Lama's position: though he has brought the ideas of Tibet to world attention, Tibet itself is being remade as a Chinese province; though he was born in one of the most remote, least developed places on earth, he has become a champion of globalism and technology. He is a religious leader who warns against being needlessly distracted by religion; a Tibetan head of state who suggests that exile from Tibet can be an opportunity; an incarnation of a Tibetan god who stresses his everyday humanity.Moving from Dharamsala, India - the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile - to Lhasa, Tibet, to venues in the West where the Dalai Lama's pragmatism, rigour, and scholarship are sometimes lost on an audience yearning for mystical visions, The Open Road illuminates the hidden life, the transforming ideas, and the daily challenges of a global icon.