Tuesday 16 November 2021

Take two: The Patagonian Hare, Claude Lanzmann (2012)

For a full review, see my Patreon. It only takes about $10 a year to get access to my reviews so – why not subscribe? Fresh content every week or so (or even more frequently) as I read a lot of books in a variety of genres. Currently saving money by reading things unread that’ve been ignored in my collection for years, books that’ve travelled with me from place to place. 

I’m grimacing in the above photo because I had to squat in order to get this shot of the book’s cover in front of Fritz Kraul’s ‘Koge’ (1912), selected for inclusion because Lanzmann’s memoir looks back – as all memoirs do – at the distant past. 

The painting came to me via my cousin and his father (who’d inherited it from his uncle-by-marriage). I bought Lanzmann’s book probably at Books of Buderim. The sticker on the back isn’t branded and that bookstore is a small independent concern. I used to go there with mum some weekends as she liked to browse in shops. When I was with her she’d also make time to take the opportunity to chat with people – not excluding salesclerks and proprietors – met with in her travels. 

Buderim is at the very top of a hill. The fact of the town being located on a summit is apposite as Lanzmann and Simone de Beauvoir, his lover, used to go on mountain hikes. Uncle Elmer also used to climb mountains when he was young, and I have some photograph albums with pictures of a young Elmer in the snow.

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