wytchcroft: heavent sent (Default)
wytchcroft ([personal profile] wytchcroft) wrote2010-01-18 06:48 pm
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quick Lit question; Antoine De Saint-Exupery - Wind, Sand and Stars

Just finished reading the wonderful 'Wind, Sand and Stars'. What a book!

That Saint-Exupery manages to tell both an internal and external story so powerfully and vividly and yet straight-forwardly is quite staggering.

One question; during the crash chapter (my favourite) i found that the distances measured made no sense, especially if you try and plot them on a map of Libya, just impossible (surely) to walk the miles under those conditions?

Maybe it was the translation, or just the mens' delirium...

I'm going to do some research but does anyone know?

It didn't detract in any way from the book which i strongly recommend:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind,_Sand_and_Stars
 
My next book to read is The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov... 

[identity profile] aliasse.livejournal.com 2010-01-19 11:13 pm (UTC)(link)
This makes me laugh so much:
"Doctor, you're like the Encyclopaedia Britannica. You know everything.:
"I do know rather a lot," I replied nervously.
"I believe you even speak Sanskrit."
"Fluently," I replied. But she believed that too.
"And you must surely know the Russian novelists. Tell me something about Dostoevsky or Bela Bartok. I've a friend who never stops talking about them."
"I never met Bartok," I said untruthfully, shocked at her ignorance. "But I knew old Dostoevsky really well. He and my father were at primary school together, and he often came for supper."
"How lucky you are, to have known such famous people as a child. I'm sure you could even tell me why Aix-La-Chapelle is called Aachen in German."

I like to think that someone actually said some of these things in real life to Szerb.

[identity profile] wytchcroft.livejournal.com 2010-01-19 11:19 pm (UTC)(link)
well, i'm a private person - i don't like to brag you know.

[identity profile] aliasse.livejournal.com 2010-01-19 11:22 pm (UTC)(link)
Stop it. Szerb died in the 1940s. Unless you mean 'private' as in 'dead' and 'brag' as in 'make ghostly visitations via lj'. ooooooooooo!

[identity profile] wytchcroft.livejournal.com 2010-01-19 11:28 pm (UTC)(link)
ah you forget - i am everywhere and nowhere, spread across time itself like butter - no, PEANUT butter - no, wait, like humus! Or... toothpaste maybe or... a slug trail... no more of a - *wafts away into the aether*


[identity profile] aliasse.livejournal.com 2010-01-20 08:50 pm (UTC)(link)
THIS is why I thought you lived in the States...

[identity profile] aliasse.livejournal.com 2010-01-21 10:03 am (UTC)(link)
*Baldrick moment*