Reading Leigh Fermor

I'm glad Steve posted on Patrick Leigh Fermor who he and Robert D. Kaplan introduced me to recently. Kaplan tells of a memorable luncheon he had with Sir PLF at the conclusion of his excellent book Mediterranean Winter. After reading "A Time of Gifts" and "Between the Woods and the Water" he is rapidly becoming one of my favorites, too.

In a burst of enthusiasm after reading the Lane profile, I ordered several more of Leigh Fermor's books. The first to come, which I read over the weekend, was Three Letters from the Andes. By most accounts it is his worst book, though I found it entertaining. It tells the story of a trip he made to Peru in 1971 accompanying some friends who were expert climbers on their quest to scale a couple of Andean peaks. PLF is no climber and says his duties were to stay in base camp and "tend the primus stove."

With the climbing portion of their trip done, PLF and his friends take a trip to Lake Titicaca. While there, they visit the Uru, a group of lake-dwelling Indians. The Uru live on acre-sized artificial islands that they make of woven reeds and straw that are anchored in shallow parts of the lake. PLF is particularly intrigued by the Uru, as one of his guidebooks says that "they claim to be subhuman." Leigh Fermor immediately states, "This unique boast gains in substance when one meets them."

PLF's dry wit and pyrotechnic prose are on display as he describes Uru living conditions and objets d'art they offer for sale.

"Here the happy analphabetics live hugger-mugger among the waving reeds on an acrid and waterlogged humus of trodden straw and mud and fish-scales and droppings, rather like colonies of gannets. In exchange for boxes of matches and bread-rolls they offered us artless and unpretentious embroideries: rags of canvas on which pink, crimson and green golliwogs with their arms projecting like twigs had been unambitiously stitched in thick wool, as though by three-year-old Miros. I wish I'd bought one."