Gordon Sinclair (1900–1984)

I didn't finish this, but still thought it was worth noting. Gordon Sinclair was a Canadian media icon, born in 1900. He started as a newspaper journalist in 1922, and was broadcasting on radio and TV until his death in 1984. This was his first book, written in 1932, shortly after his career really took off, and was a bestseller when it came out. Adventurous, exciting, swaggering, boastful, reckless, brash, and unrelentingly racist. He enters forbidden areas, armed with two guns and a club. He faces down bandits, rebels, tigers, cobras, and monkeys. He keeps talking about manliness. He interviews Gandhi in prison, bests him in every argument, and dismisses him as a mountebank. His Canadian readers loved it at the time, and further books of his travels sold well, too. It seems to be fairly well established that his stories were embellished, but he remained a popular figure all his life. I was only able to read a few chapters before the racism became too much for me. It was undoubtedly a typical western attitude at the time, but is pretty hard to take now. The book was interesting as an artifact, but not one that I want to examine too closely.… (mais)