Travels With Myself and Another PDF
Preview Travels With Myself and Another
Table of Contents Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Introduction PREFACE One - CREDENTIALS Two - MR MA’S TIGERS Three - MESSING ABOUT IN BOATS Four - INTO AFRICA Five - ONE LOOK AT MOTHER RUSSIA Six - WHAT BORES WHOM? Seven - NON-CONCLUSION By the same author FICTION The Trouble I’ve Seen A Stricken Field The Heart of Another Liana The Wine of Astonishment The Honeyed Peace Two by Two His Own Man Pretty Tales for Tired People The Lowest Trees Have Tops The Weather in Africa NONFICTION The Face of War The View from the Ground Idaho, 1940 Most Tarcher/Putnam books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchase for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, and educational needs. Special books or book excerpts also can be created to fit specific needs. For details, write Putnam Special Markets, 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014. Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. 375 Hudson Street New York, NY 10014 www.penguinputnam.com First published in 1978 by Eland First Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam Edition 2001 Copyright © 1978 by Martha Gellhorn Introduction copyright © 2001 by Bill Buford photo on page iv © Lloyd Arnold/Archive Photos, print courtesy of The John F. Kennedy Library; photo on page xxii by Ruth Rabb; photo on page 8 courtesy of The John F. Kennedy Library; photo on page 58 © U.S. Navy, courtesy of The John F. Kennedy Library; photo on page 106 by Ruth Rabb; photo on page 240 courtesy of The John F. Kennedy Library; photo on page 284 courtesy of The John F. Kennedy Library; photo on page 292 © Lloyd Arnold/Archive Photos, print courtesy of The John F. Kennedy Library All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission. Published simultaneously in Canada Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gellhorn, Martha, 1908-1998 Travels with myself and another / Martha Gellhorn. p. cm. Originally published: London: Allen Lane, 1978. eISBN : 978-1-585-42090-2 http://us.penguingroup.com For Diana Cooper with long-lasting love The good traveller doesn’t know where he’s going. The great traveller doesn’t know where he’s been. CHUANG TZÛ Leap before you look. OLD SLAVONIC MAXIM “Oh S. the sights are worse than the journeys.” SYBILLE BEDFORD, A VISIT TO DON OTAVIO INTRODUCTION My dear William. Note: that’s William. Not Bill. You must change your name. No one will ever take you seriously as Bill. Bill Buford? No, it just won’t do. And your hair. You’ve got to do something with your hair. And that beard? Shave it. You look like Allen Ginsberg.” I’m quoting Martha Gellhorn, a characteristic letter, imperious, forthright, even bullying. Martha was a novelist, a war correspondent and, with the publication of Travels with Myself and Another in 1978 (when she was just turning sixty), a travel writer of a wildly original voice. She died in 1998. I had the privilege of publishing some of her work during her last decade, her ninth. “I forgot to add, William. You must buy new trousers that don’t look like what the well-dressed young elephants are wearing this year. How else can you win the Iranian’s love?” The Iranian in question was a particularly elusive girlfriend. Martha tutored me on matters of the heart, and on drinking (you could never drink enough), on my appearance (a disaster), and on my manners— especially my manners: my manners, in Martha’s eyes, were catastrophic. “I’ll be in London for a few days later this month,” she wrote me after we had a row arising out of another one of my behavioral misdemeanors, and the exchange must have lead to Martha’s being so rude—and I infer this from the correspondence that I’m rereading for the first time—that I sank into a sulk. “If you don’t return my call, I’ll sadly take it that you wish to sever relations forever. A pity. But think about it, William. I may be the only old person you know, and elders and betters are necessary as I know with despair, now that all of mine are dead.” The elementary facts of her life: born in 1908, in St. Louis, the place, according to Martha, that everyone flees from (and thus the ideal nurturing ground for a travel writer); bossy, straight-talking, cigarette-smoking; the boozy reporter of wars and of the plight of the down-and-out; also a writer of short stories, novellas, and novels. She was married to Ernest Hemingway, and she hated the fact that, whenever her work was written about, his name was invariably mentioned as well, just as I’m mentioning it now. But it’s hard to avoid. The two of them met when the world was at its most dramatic. They fell in love at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and divorced once World War II had ended—and in between was Cuba and big-game hunting and trips to China
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