Visiting New Zealand just now is the US citizen, nonstop circumnavigator balloonist Steve Fossett, who, in an interview on radionz this morning was described as an "adventurer" for his seemingly nonstop determination to take challenges in high gliding and whole day trip air records. And even if his attempt here is against all odds not a single listener, I'm sure, would have wished him ill luck or wind!
Literary American adventurer was author Ernest Hemingway who at age 18 became a reporter at the Kansas City Star. Deemed 'defective sight' he missed drafting to WWI, but determined to serve, opted into the American Red Cross. Later he took up writing to gain the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. In his "For Whom the Bell Tolls" there is a telling dialogue. Tks to (chiasmus.org) we can ponder what Pablo says to Anselmo.
"Coward, ... You treat a man as a coward because he has a tactical sense. Because he can see the results of an idiocy in advance. It is not cowardly to know what is foolish."
Another voice, this in a comment about literary celeb, Gertrude Stein, in a 1933 letter to his friend, Arnold Gingrich:
"Then she got the idea that anybody who was good must be queer...
But what was worse she got the idea that anybody who was queer must be good."
I added this last one because in the BBC movie "IRIS" - about author Iris Murdoch - we see her seeming obsession about being good. And it made me wonder whether one woman was influenced by the other.. either way.
The movie suggests that Iris was perhaps a 'cuckoo' of sorts, her sexual exploits necessary to access 'good' minds. Elsewhere the script enabled 'her' to say that novelists are entitled to other peoples' secrets. Which, until the above thought, suggested to me deliberate method to her (earlier) exploits.. but mebbe not, mebbe not so rational as supposed.. ? yr comment/ideas most welcome.
please send to: - (john) - alors01@yahoo.com