Korean Job Discussion Forums

Woland · Joined: 10 May 2006 Location: Seoul

To call Kapuscinski only a journalist would be to label him too narrowly, although he was for many years the sole third world correspondent of Poland's official news agency. In reality, he was a documentarian of the highest order, and one of the finest prose stylists of the 20th century. His close call with death, as he depicted it in detailed plainness, from having his truck breakdown, lost in the desert in Africa made me hope that he was immortal. I am sadly disappointed. The NYTimes obituary:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/24/world/europe/24kapuscinski.html?ref=obituaries

ddeubel · Joined: 20 Jul 2005

Thanks for posting this. I wouldn't have known and he was one of a kind.

I remember getting as a Christmas gift years ago his, "Soccer Wars", a collection of essays. Marvellous and he had the "common touch" , a way of relating to and then relating for others, the inanities of life/politics and culture. Bruce Chatwin, spared down.

DD

Woland · Joined: 10 May 2006 Location: Seoul

Yeah, Chatwin is the best comparison as a writer. I recall reading somewhere that they met once in their travels in Africa. Apparently Kapuscinski wasn't impressed.

Junior · Joined: 18 Nov 2005 Location: the eye

I used to have a PE teacher called Mr. kapuczynski. He even carried a "kappa" sports bag.

Laughing

bucheon bum · Joined: 16 Jan 2003

i read "soccer wars." great read. Not sure why i didn't look into reading more of his writing.

ddeubel · Joined: 20 Jul 2005

A very nice piece on Kapuscinski in The Nation, by a Polish compatriot. [and Poland seems to have such a suffit of immortal writers, including Singer and Milosz whose "Captive Mind" is a work on communism/ideology, not to be missed.).

I think, in these times of cultural misunderstanding, we need more like him, to translate cultures for us. Translate with a precise and illuminating, wide scope fashion. Not many like him who can or did this.....as she wrote,

Woland · Joined: 10 May 2006 Location: Seoul

I saw the same obit in the IHT today, as an appreciation. It's good to know that Kapuscinski is getting this level of attention. But I would have chosen a different highlight to quote from it for this forum:

[quote-"M. Rittenhouse, quoting R. Kapuscinski,"]Interviewing him for the BBC just days after September 11, I never imagined it was my last time in his attic. "I greatly fear that we will waste this moment. That instead of meaningful dialogue, it will just be gates and metal detectors," he said.[/quote]

Back to your question, Twain's travel writings carry that same effect for me. More recently, I really like Jonathan Raban's work, like Old Glory (about taking a boat down the Mississippi) and Coasting (about sailing around England).

Woland · Joined: 10 May 2006 Location: Seoul

ANother appreciation of Kapuscinski, this time by another, similar writer - Verlyn Klinkenborg - in the NYTimes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/opinion/02fri4.html

What was interesting to me here was how Klinkenborg talks about Kapuscinski's skill at noticing and the role dislocation played in it. I'm trying these past two weeks to talk with my students in Second Language Acquisition about Schmidt's Noticing Hypothesis (that learning requires noticing) and how we can create noticing in part by dislocating students in terms of what they know in the second language. Neat coincidence.

J.B. Clamence · Joined: 15 Jan 2003

I'm very sad to hear that. In grad school I had the honor of chatting with him briefly as he signed my copy of "Imperium" after a talk he gave at my university. He seemed like a really sweet man, and of course very insightful. He will be missed.