Ryszard Kapuscinski : Truth or Lies?

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Firstly a correction. I said a couple of posts ago that the poetry reading organised by Griffin books in Penarth and featuring Carol Ann Duffy was going to be in May. In fact it's in June. And, work permitting I intend to go, becoming if it occurs the first poetry reading I've ever attended.

Anyway I've finished the Penguin pocket book of Ryszard Kapuscinski's An Advertisement For Toothpaste, a collection of four non fiction essays from the early sixties set mainly in the Polish countryside unlike the work across the globe that he's remembered for.

He was a journalist in when Poland was Communist. And the thing with him is that with his book The Emperor he became to my knowledge the only non fiction Communist writer translated into mainstream fiction in Britain. In that sense he was unique

As I said when I bought this book there is a feeling of trepidation surrounding it. As since I last read one of his works decades ago allegations have surfaced with regard to the veracity of his writings. I'm not sure, in Wales over half a century later, whether I read fiction or non fiction. "Magical journalism" which is how he described his work (and of what I read remember liking) is not really an answer.

(And as a quick aside. If you think I'm saying all of this because he was Polish. I'll have the same fear if I ever read a book by either Norman Lewis or Patrick Leigh Fermor again. Writers who I loved when I was much younger, but who have had similar charges put against them.)

So obviously what I'm going to say next is a guess and should be read as such. To be a reader and to be unsure what you're reading is a true account is a new and unsettling experience for me. Remember we're not talking here about viewpoints, but actual events.

I finished the book thinking that what I had read was probably an exaggeration of the truth, which is of course a lie. But like all really good lies there seemed to be a foundation of honesty.

Let's take a mild example. He is helping in "The Stiff" to transport a body of a dead coal miner with a group of other men across a Polish region where they meet a group of young women, who are of course pretty. Their joie de vivre a counterweight to "the Stiff" of the title. My view was .....really?

Incidentally "magical journalism" seems to be a way of allowing unnecessary long words into a narrative (and yes I'm making assumptions here as this is a translation). Girls view a fight in a dance hall as "metaphysical". Personally I've always assumed they view a fight in a dance hall as something they should move away from . Also he somehow was able to in this very same essay set in a Polish dance hall in the early sixties to include the words "Egyptian hieroglyphics". The question here is.....why?

The Emperor his most famous work about Haile Selassie is considered as an allegory for Communist Poland. After reading this book I have my doubts. For although the picture it presents of early sixties Polish countryside is not a good one on the other hand two of the stories seemed like Communist propaganda to me.

The title essay: An Advertisement For Toothpaste has an assertion that to obtain material possessions people in a Polish village are not buying toothpaste. I mean that's just a load of rubbish. Did not believe that for one second.

The other story where Communist propaganda seemed to be in play was The Taking of Elizabieta. Here the Catholic church is seen as a secretive and sinister organisation. Now I have no love for the Catholic church but at that time it was considered the only real opposition to the Communist authorities. So clearly there's an agenda here.

Magical journalism? The magic has gone for me.

Until the next time.