Here was the headline in the book review section of the Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper that caused me to stop and take notice. “Vincent Lam’s first novel, about Vietnam, has makings of a masterpiece.” Vincent Lam is an emergency physician Toronto who also writes – very well. His […]
Tag: Ann Kirkland
TRAVEL PURSUITS – So why don’t the Vietnamese hate the Americans?
Just last night, during intermission at a concert, I overheard a conversation between two people, one asking the other if she planned to join the fall Classical Pursuits trip Vietnam Voices: A Balanced Opposition. Over the din, I heard her response: “Oh, no, I could never go to Vietnam. I […]
ON THE ROAD WITH ANN – Mystery & Manners in Savannah, April 2012
It seems I was barely back from India before I was heading back to the airport en route to Savannah to discuss Flannery O’Connor – for the fourth time. You might think that this would be a rather hum drum same old, same old experience for discussion leader Nancy Carr […]
ON THE ROAD WITH ANN – India and its afterglow
Our days were full of paradox and mystery. One does not return from perhaps the most spiritual and sensuous place on earth having “made sense of India.” In sifting and percolating my impressions, I am reminded of a continuing theme in one of the books we read, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s […]
TODAY IN LITERATURE – “The Day Always Belongs to the Sun,’ by Tran Thanh Ha
On of the things that strikes me over and over on our Classical Pursuits trips is the confirmation that however we may appear to differ across the ages, oceans and culture, in all essential ways, we are one human family. Maybe Shylock said it as well as any, “If you prick us, […]
ON THE ROAD WITH ANN – awe
“A teardrop on the cheek of time” – Rabindranath Tagore on the Taj Mahal a first glimpse from a distance … a feeling of awe
ON THE ROAD WITH ANN – senses and ritual
A ritual performed morning and night in temple on hotel grounds in small village of Narlai by the tribesmen who work there. You can’t hear the bells and drumming and chanting or smell the incense, but I wish you could. From india9.com: “Narlai, situated at the base of […]
ON THE ROAD WITH ANN – Branding in India
One of the things that makes me cringe here is the number of water bottles each of us consumes each day. We are cautioned to be mightily wary of the water, keeping our mouth clamped shut in the shower and using bottled water […]
ON THE ROAD WITH ANN – Day 2, Old Delhi
Old Delhi is the India I feared, although I know there are far worse slums in the world. It is the India described in “Midnight’s Children” when the affluent and sheltered Amina Sinai is lured at night to a fortune teller at the […]
ON THE ROAD WITH ANN – almost
We have read so much and many of us have watched lots of films and talked to both South Asians and those well-traveled there. I watched A Passage to India the other night and was overcome with embarrassment at the arrogant excesses of the British Raj. In more current books, the picture […]