Reviews for Following the Equator

The average rating for Following the Equator based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-06-18 00:00:00 Frank Estes III If anybody tells you Mark Twain wasn't a liberal, find this book, put it in your posession and read every other chapter outloud to that person. Written rather late in his life (1891 or so), this is Twain's nonfiction account of a trip on a passenger ship around the equator. He writes a chapter describing a comic incident aboard ship and then the next chapter is a sober indictment of man's inhumanity to man. The chapters on Australia are most telling. He sees the Australia's treatment of Aboriginal peoples very much the same way he saw the American slave system. It offends his very being. He describes the dinners given in his honor, the luxury afforded him and the good luck which accompanies him as he tours Australia and New Zealand. Mayors of small and large towns want to be photographed with him, people toast him. He travels in the fastest trains. Indeed, he marvels at the technology allowing him all this. But suddenly, as in one chapter in which he describes the systematic slaughter of Aborigines, the comic mask is tossed aside, and a man of utmost sensitivity is revealed. For we live in a world where one has to be extremely sensitive to notice the horror inflicted by conquerors on the vanquished. FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR makes such sudden shifts from light to darkness as to be shocking. Twain is still an icon. Picture him in that white suit, with his white hair and white, flowing mustache. Imagine this man coming to your town. Brass bands play before he reaches the lectern. He tells hilarious stories, makes great comebacks when people try to show how comic they themselves are and he even smokes cigars with those who'll smoke with him. His train moves on. Several weeks later you read his article about your town. He says funny things you know are true. Suddenly, he refers to a little set of shacks he's seen from the train. You hadn't known he'd seen them. He describes the desperation of the people inhabiting them. He says your country put them in those shacks. He says his country has done that, too. He wants you to feel as ashamed of this as he is. But he made you laugh, didn't he? Why did he do that?

Review # 2 was written on 2010-05-10 00:00:00 Kevin Krahn I feel sorry for folks whose exposure to Mark Twain is limited to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Although those are good books, I really love his travel writing. Following the Equator is not a book you would want to read to find out the best route to take, the best places to eat and sleep or what to see. But, it is a book to read if you enjoy sardonic humor, with Twain's wry comments about what he sees. One surprising thing to me, given Twain's causal use of racial slurs is his outrage at how the whites in South Africa were treating the blacks, which he linked to how Americans treated native Americans. But the reason to read Twain these days is that he is still so funny. Here's a passage about the clothes he saw the Boers wearing in South Africa: A gaunt, shackly country lout six feet high, in battered gray slouched hat with wide brim and old resin-colored breeches, had on a hideous brand-new woolen coat which was imitation tiger skin-- wavy broad stripes of dazzling yellow and deep brown. I thought he ought to be hanged, and asked the stationmaster if it could be arranged. He said no; and not only that, but said it rudely; said it with a quite unnecessary show of feeling. Then he muttered something about my being a jackass, and walked away and pointed me out to people, and did everything he could to turn public sentiment against me. It is what one gets for trying to do good.