Butterfly Mind [Hardcover]

Patrick Brown (Author)

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Product Details

Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: House of Anansi Press; First Edition edition (Aug 5 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0887842143
ISBN-13: 978-0887842146
Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 14.2 x 2.3 cm
Shipping Weight: 454 g

Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #309,698 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Quill & Quire

The new book by longtime CBC foreign correspondent Patrick Brown could very easily have been three books. First, there are the bare bones of a confessional memoir. Brown is very frank about his struggles with alcoholism and what that meant for his work, health, and personal life. The book also has a lot of great stories from Brown’s stints reporting from Europe and Asia, covering wars and revolutions for most of the last three decades. And finally, Brown shares encounters with an assortment of dissidents in China, where he is currently based. Separately, each of these could have made for a fascinating read. Brown doesn’t have nearly the same level of celebrity as recent U.S. journalists-turned-memoirists like Barbara Walters (or even The New York Times’ David Carr, for that matter) but some of his insights on how his drinking affected his work (and vice versa) are fascinating and worthy of much more elaboration. And Brown’s international perspective may be unparalleled among Canadian journalists of his generation. But crammed together into one slim volume with chapters that leap from, for example, Brown’s denial of his drinking problem to the fall of the Berlin Wall to an interview with the Chinese gynecologist who first noticed an increase in AIDS cases in that country, it is jarring. And the connections that Brown tries to make between these strands – that particular chapter is entitled “Denial” – are too tenuous. Butterfly Mind is the rare book that leaves you wanting more, though not necessarily in a postive way. Like Brown’s reporting for CBC News, the book shows off his eye for that one telling detail or anecdote that can make a journalist’s story memorable. The jumpy structure – perhaps intended to replicate the life of a foreign correspondent or the short attention span of TV audiences – undermines the book’s strengths and should have been rethought.

Review

“. . . a modest, engaging reportage, marked by affection and curiosity, tinged with grace.” -- Winnipeg Free Press

" . . . . the book shows off his eye for that one telling detail or anecdote that can make a journalist's story memorable." -- Quill & Quire

". . . a striking study of the eerie parallels between the struggles with alcohol and autocrats. . . . [BUTTERFLY MIND is] an incisive analysis of the major political convulsions of the past three decades by someone who's witnessed a good number. Brown weaves his own decline into a larger tale of tyranny and resistance in Lebanon, the Philippines, Afghanistan, Burma, Bulgaria, and, especially, China . . ." -- Walrus

". . . compelling. . . . The reportage, too, is excellent. . ." -- Globe and Mail

". . . fascinating. . . Brown's personal story distinguishes BUTTERFLY MIND from other I-was-there journalist memoirs. . ." -- Montreal Gazette

". . . fascinating. . . Brown's personal story distinguishes Butterfly Mind from other I-was-there journalist memoirs. . ." -- The Gazette

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5.0 out of 5 stars The State in Transition, April 3 2010

Ian Gordon Malcomson (Victoria, BC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Butterfly Mind (Hardcover)

Yes, this is the Patrick Brown who used to file reports from Beijing on a nightly basis as the CBC China correspondent in the early 20th century. This was the beginning of an era when China was finally on the road to modernizing and streamlining its economy. Revolutionary Maoist principles were out and Confuscian pragmatism was in as the order of the day. China was now ready to take what the West had to offer in the form of capitalistic freeedom and blend it with communistic orthodoxy to achieve the economic growth that would finally spell prosperity for its restless population. As I read Brown's biograhical account of this epic awakening of a sleeping giant of nation, I started to appreciate how acutely sensitive he was to the evolving modern Chinese mindset. What he brought to this assignment was his natural ability to probe and analyze a vast array of challenging social and political situations encountered in his travels through various war zones around the world. What makes his story so appealing is the fact that he carried with him the personal demons of alcoholism that constantly threatened to derail his mission to discover what makes the human race tick. By facing up to his own failings, Brown the alcoholic becomes Brown the mature and dedicated reporter who no longer just reports on the news as it happens but helps his audiences understand it greater impact. To do this, Brown takes his readers through a number of political cultures that underwent major sea change over the last couple of decades, ending with China's grand entry on the world stage. Along the way are some very identifiable stages that Brown and his 'butterfly mind' has been able to pick up on that uncannily remind him of his own painful transformtion as a struggling individual. First, there is the alarming state of chaos where life seems to come unglued, followed by a false sense of dictatorship where the artificially strong hand of the law is imposed, to be succeeded by a prolonged period of denial ending in eventual intervention from outside forces. As this book shows, this pattern is universal and irrevocable as regimes slowly democratize. It is Brown's belief that for every action regimes or individuals with a pathological disorder take to redirect their respective existences, an equal and opposite reaction occurs that brings about change of varying degrees: some violent, others orderly. I recommend this book to anyone who seriously wants to look at how important foreign journalists like Patrick Brown are to our understanding of the human condition in the context of political change. Lots of humorous and ironic moments in this adventure where the leaders are often seen as the last ones to catch on that something important is happening out there.

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