Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World. Part 5
1897
Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World. Part 5
1897
Mark Twain arrives in India still carrying the romantic fantasies of a boyhood imagination: visions of princes, maharajas, the romance of the East. What he finds is something stranger, funnier, and far more complicated. This installment of Following the Equator finds the American humorist navigating the absurdities of British colonial rule, the chaos of daily life in Bombay, and his own bewildered position as a guest in an empire he cannot quite decide whether to mock or admire. His anecdotes about hiring a native servant, a 'bearer' with his own eccentricities and the inevitable communication breakdowns, are as hilarious as they are quietly devastating. The genius of Twain's travel writing lies in what he doesn't quite say. Behind the jokes and cultural misunderstandings lies a sharp, uncomfortable portrait of imperial hubris and the poverty that surrounds it. This is satire that works not by lecturing, but by letting the reader see the ridiculous for themselves. For lovers of sharp wit, travel writing that transcends mere description, and anyone who wants to watch a master of American prose dismantle the pretensions of empire while appearing to simply tell a good story.
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“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.””
— Mark Twain
“There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.””
— Mark Twain
“In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.””
— Mark Twain
“Be good and you will be lonesome.””
— Mark Twain
“He had had much experience of physicians, and said 'the only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd druther not'.””
— Mark Twain
“The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done - these are traits of the human race at large.””
— Mark Twain
“Names are not always what they seem.””
— Mark Twain
“Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.””
— Mark Twain
“I find that, as a rule, when a thing is a wonder to us it is not because of what we see in it, but because of what others have seen in it. We get almost all our wonders at second hand.””
— Mark Twain
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Twain, Mark. Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World. Part 5. Lex, lex-books.com/book/following-the-equator-a-journey-around-the-world-part-5-295a5eb7-7b49-4cba-b555-8ab467e37d4e.Twain, M. (1897). Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World. Part 5. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/following-the-equator-a-journey-around-the-world-part-5-295a5eb7-7b49-4cba-b555-8ab467e37d4eTwain, Mark. Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World. Part 5. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/following-the-equator-a-journey-around-the-world-part-5-295a5eb7-7b49-4cba-b555-8ab467e37d4e.
