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Something Different23 September 2004

Motorcycle Diaries

38m.jpgTHE MOVIE MotorcycleDiariesthemovie.com MD on IMDB.com THE HYPE Win a trip to Peru (from STA Travel), Bolivia from (Amizade.org), or books, soundtracks, and journals (from Lonely Planet) "New Yorker writer and Che biographer John Lee Anderson offers a thoughtful reflection on the ubiquitous Che image. Che, he writes, “lives on as a youthful recrimination of the Icarus myth, which is at once a moral tale and a lamentation about the eternal tragedy of the fleeting nature of youth and its doomed idealism.” - WorldHum.com Movie review from John Hartl on MSNBC.com TimesOnline.co.uk review. Che.jpgTHE BOOK Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey Around South America by Ernesto Guevara, Ann Wright (Translator) From Publishers Weekly
"Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara became Fidel Castro's chief lieutenant in the Cuban revolution, Cuba's minister for industry and later a guerrilla in Bolivia, where he was captured and executed in 1967. This high-spirited travel diary of Guevara's eight-month motorcycle journey across Argentina, Chile, Peru, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela as a 23-year-old medical student in 1951-52 mixes lyrical observation, youthful adventure and anti-imperialist political analysis. With a doctor friend as traveling companion, Guevara stows away on a cargo ship, explores Inca ruins, volunteers as a fireman, visits a leper colony and displays solidarity with miners and farm workers. Guevara's snide passing remarks targeting blacks, homosexuals and Jews reveal an unpleasant side of the countercultural icon. On balance, this candid journal, part self-discovery, part fieldwork, glimmers with portents of the future revolutionary. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc."

2 comments

  • FriskoDude24 September 2004
    Jen, Another view of Che today at Slate: https://slate.msn.com/id/2107100/ Carl Also, please check my new blog about the perils of travel writing: https://travelwriters.blogspot.com
  • Curt Rosengren25 September 2004
    Another interesting book is Chasing Che by Patrick Symmes, who took a motorcyle ride with Motorcycle Diaries in hand, tracing Guevara's and Granado's path through Latin America.