Egyptian Journal [Paperback]

I haven't read Lord of the Flies since high school, but it was hard to believe this book was written by the same author. At age 72, Golding agrees to sail the Nile with his wife and "crew" and write a book about it. This creates an anxiety that surfaces throughout the book, like Seinfeld's show about nothing. With charm, wit and a sense of fatalism, he sets off on what becomes a largely uneventful trip. It is this dilemma - his attempts to find sights and local color - and his descriptions of these travails that are the heart of the book. An enjoyable read, with some history and insights on Egyptian culture, it is filled with the delight and crankiness that accompany any trip worth taking.

I read this in recovery from peritonitis before it was realized cancer was infiltrating a main artery in my small intestine, and at the time major gastro bleeds were causing me to collapse, followed by unrelenting pain and hospitilization as various surgeries were considered and infection threatened again to kill me. When I 1st read I'd been in a Demerol stupor 17 days and hadn't eaten in 23 days.I had to re-learn how and reaquaint myself with smell plus endure drug related withdrawal that turned out to be a horrific "gift " of the medical "treatment." I was reading to find my way back. But I came home, knowing I was still ill, not knowing why (a very hard thing to hold for ten horrifying years), feeling anxiety in attacks from the med withdrawal and trying to just heal myself.I gave up on care. It was six months before I could force myself to regular care again I was so jaded, insulted, violated and defeated. Worried about leaving my kids, deciding to just be with them. I drew because that's my talent, and for some reason I could handle non fiction travel books. I really liked I found this one.
This one I enjoyed.

I'd like to travel. I'd like to see the Nile, China, different spots, but I go in books. So I've read a lot of travel books especially those Like Travels With Charlie, Sea of Cortez, island related ones, or many others especially those written by authors that decided to diary a trip. One reason, I think they manage to bring the experience through their sheer insight and written ability to you captured within a time, within a perspective, within an ordinariness that somehow relates the times of their writing/life and visualizes the place they take their set of perceptions to see. Good writers traveling are expansive and free. It is amazing how much I love I Wonder Where I Wander. Books of authors moving are one of the real favorites of my reading.

That said I had this book. I think I may have ordered it from this book seller- but I don't know why, maybe it was recommended. Maybe it was a gift, but I doubt it. No one seems to know I like this kind of thing. So how I came to have it, can't recall. There is a lot from those days I can't recall. I'm still paying the bills from a lot of botched care though, that brings it to mind, you recall that $80,000 debt daily.

Anyway as I faced my Waterloo,(and I'm realizing had to from that day on plan life around restroom availability-here his descriptions tho brief but of that travel issue-restrooms-is amusing and Golding deals with a mess of it on a boat for a month in his "loo" dealings kept mostly to imagination) he faced/presented in book form a trip up the Nile. At his 75 years with his wife, I thought that was interesting, after a Nobel, he was recording observations and irritation, daily venturing, the inconvenience mixed in with the brilliant observations or historical material being seen, felt, learned first hand. It was Golding generally slowly moving you through the experience. You can even see his photo's and learn of their guides and interactions.
I myself imagined it like long lengthy letters from an older friend detailing rather well a trip, a personal and revealing friend that you have long understanding with, things are not needing to be couched in emotional terms or parts hidden or rewritten around your relationship baggage-just an honest telling intended privately for you. That is how it reads. And that makes it powerful because quite actually I have no one that would write to me like that, nor understand me in that way, nor even be interested in it. It was a really important part of my recovery at a time in my own life I came to terms with the fact that I really didn't have that life in letters- that this so beautifully conveys exists as its domain. And there was somehow an acceptance here-this is the trip I am sharing as I experienced it because I'd like to have had your companionship. He writes to that stance,
so that miles away I might feel the heat or see the cooked vegetables, run my hand over a roughened three thousand year old stone wall, smell the must, or see some whizened guide jumping onto a bank and gather a sense of life on this old, historic river the birthplace of civilization where time slows and you step out of your self, me to heal and recover,him to face life, by pushing through the written word into a visualization-albeit an extended one-that rivets and lulls you, holds you, by the sheer ability of the writer entertains and edifies you, teaches you, and sustains a connection to human activity and presence through time and in a place safely removed from personal stresses and the chaotic desidera of daily churning life.( maybe these travel memoirs are extensively edited, but I always feel the ones I love as free of that extensive process and the intrusion of the editor- as if written fresh to page and daily experiences and observation) I took a mental trip through the book, this book among several, to aid my ability to survive and deal with pain. It was something I could pick up and read as entries, it changed as travel changes, did not require of me sustaining plot or having expectation, it allowed me to move when I couldn't move. And since I can't afford travel, was too ill to travel, can't work out the complexities, just to be aware I could go and see and retain a feeling of having been better for it meant a lot.

That happens to be one of the things I find most amazing about our human capacities. That we can mentally do things like that. And a good writer can certainly bring such an experience to you.

I'm looking at the book planning a return trip. I'm sure I'll enjoy it because right now there are difficult things that seem to need the healing such an escape does offer.

› Go to Amazon.com to see both reviews  4.0 out of 5 stars