Reading Markham is like a breath of fresh air. The world of training horses, Africa and airplanes is so deliciously foreign to me, I could have read 500 more pages. I found the writer to be undeniably feminine yet no-nonsense.

I would recommend this book to all my free spirited friends.

این كتاب سرگذشت غریبی داشته.در سال 1942 كه منتشر می شه،در هیاهوی جنگ جهانی گم می شه تا اینكه حدود 40 سال بعد همینگوی نامه ای در ستایش كتاب به ویراستارش می نویسه و كتاب سر زبان ها می افته. اون موقع خانم مركام مشغول پرورش اسب توی كنیا بوده و حق التالیف كتابش چند سال پایانی عمرش به كمكش میاد تا از فقر بیرون بیاد. خانم مركام اولین زنی بوده كه به تنهایی عرض اقیانوس اطلس رو خلاف جهت باد پرواز كرده و ظاهرا مدتی هم معشوقه ی دوسنت اگزوپری بوده. تصویر آفریقای مركام به شدت جذابه و نثر كتاب یك دسته.با خواندن بخش های پرواز های شبانه بر فراز آفریقا حس تنهایی عجیبی به من دست می داد ‏

After reading Circling the Sun, I was anxious to read Beryl Markham's own account of her life, and it was well worth reading. What a remarkable woman, so fearless and capable and well-ahead of her time.

I am always taken by the way books set in Africa become somehow about the country in a way that transforms it into almost a character in itself. I certainly felt that from Markham, that Africa was more than a place to her, that it was a spirit, a soul. Her writing style is very tactile.

Hot night wind stalked through the thorn trees and leleshwa that surrounded the clearing. It bore the odour of swampland, the smell of Lake Victoria, the breath of weeds and sultry plains and tangled bush. It whipped at the oil flares and snatched at the surfaces of the Avian. But there was loneliness in it and aimlessness, as if its passing were only a sterile duty lacking even the beneficent promise of rain.

I could feel that wind and smell the swamps. Her stories unfold seamlessly and you are there with her seeing and feeling and knowing Africa and its people. Markham is not a white woman living in Africa, apart from the native inhabitants, she is a part of Africa...she hunts with Nandi, she lives an African life.

The distant roar of a waking lion rolls against the stillness of the night, and we listen. It is the voice of Africa bringing memories that do not exist in our minds or in our hearts--perhaps not even in our blood. It is out of time, but it is there, and it spans a chasm whose other side we cannot see.

Ultimately, Beryl Markham becomes the first person to make the Atlantic flight, east to west, solo. She is fearless in flight, just as she was fearless in every other aspect of her life.

I loved this passage. She was speaking of Africa, but it rang so true to me of life itself:

Blix would see it again and so should I one day. And still it was gone. Seeing it again could not be living it again. You can always rediscover an old path and wonder over it, but the best you can do then is to say, 'Ah, yes, I know this turning!' -- or remind yourself that, while you remember that unforgettable valley, the valley no longer remembers you.

Finally, on reading this book, Ernest Hemingway said "I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job...but she can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves writers." High praise from a writer who would know.

Very happy that I was pointed in the direction of knowing Beryl Markham better. I have great admiration for her and strongly recommend this marvelous book.

3.5 review to follow.

I was very pleasantly surprised at the magical prose and window into worlds of East Africa provided by this memoir. Markham is an interesting historical figure for her achievements in aviation and adventuring. For example, she was the first female bush pilot in the continent, the first woman to complete an East-to-West nonstop crossing of the Atlantic (ending into a near-crash landing in Cape Breton), and a legendary race horse trainer. And she was a bit of a celebrity among the glitterati that set down or passed through Naibobi in her time, a circle that included the famous Swedish safari hunter Baron Blixen and his wife Karen, who wrote “Out of Africa” under the name Dinesen. I understand that more about these connections is to be found in Maclean’s “Circling the Sun.” This book is more on the line of essays that showcase Markham’s skills in portraying her developing vision on life as shaped by her growing up and early adulthood in British East Africa, now Kenya.



The book is looking out rather than looking inward typical of true autobiography. There is nothing on her love life and little in the way of details on her family, schooling, or usual troubles with growing up. Instead, the book seems as if it was written to address these issues:
--Why she likes the wilderness of nature in Africa
--Why she loves the African people
--Why she loves horses
--Why she loves flying

Within the framework of that structure it’s wonderful. Somehow she is a natural at storytelling, pacing, and lyricism without purple patches, all without the benefit or corrupting influences of an MFA program that writers are nurtured on these days. She grew up at a fairly remote horse farm managed by her father with no one but tribal children to play with, members of the Nandi and Masai peoples. In growing subsistence gardens, the encounters with serious wildlife on their land, such as lions and elephants, made it clear how tenuous the invasion of civilization from the edges into the heart of the continent was at the time. Crops easily getting trampled by wild beasts is one thing, but the description of saving her poor dog from death after it was hauled away by a leopard made a pretty personal and harrowing story. In another exciting story, she recounts how as a girl of six or so she was mauled by an old lion she got too close to on their property, but still felt bad when her heroic father put it down by rifle. Here are a couple of choice quotes on the wildness of nature she grew up with:

You could expect many things of God at night when the campfire burned before the tents. You could look through and beyond the veils of scarlet and see shadows of the world as God first made it and hear the voices of the beasts He put there. It was a world as old as Time, but as new as Creation's hour had left it.

Africa is mystic; it is wild; it is a sweltering inferno; it is a photographer's paradise, a hunter's Valhalla, an escapist's Utopia. It is what you will, and it withstands all interpretations. It is the last vestige of a dead world or the cradle of a shiny new one. To a lot of people, as to myself, it is just 'home.

There are significant sections about horses, both in riding and caring for them as a girl and in training them for racing as a young adult after her father moved away due to a serious drought. I actually didn’t think there was enough focus on this subject to render a clear picture of what the work really involved. Perhaps the topic didn’t fit that well with the themes more specific to Africa. Much more coverage is spent on her relationship with a specific dog, Buller, possibly a cross between an English sheep dog and a bull terrier. A constant companion, he showed his mettle on a boar hunt Markham took as a young teen with her Nandi friend Kibii and his father, using spears in the traditional way. I felt bad about the implications of cruelty in Buller getting terribly ravaged in bringing down a speared boar along with the native’s dogs, but dogs were bred and raised for just that purpose, so I had to glide over distaste on that score. Her ability to read her favorite animals and see their nobility and courage was uplifting. Here is her thoughts on their affinity with their obviously competent wild brethren:

To an eagle or to an owl or to a rabbit, man must seem a masterful and yet a forlorn animal; he has but two friends. In his almost universal unpopularity he points out, with pride, that these two are the dog and the horse. He believes, with an innocence peculiar to himself, that they are equally proud of this alleged confraternity. He says, 'Look at my two noble friends -- they are dumb, but they are loyal.' I have for years suspected that they are only tolerant.

As a budding bush pilot it was hard for Markham to resist delivering services to wealthy game hunters for their safaris. She makes a delightful portrait of a major customer, Baron Blixen, that touches on the absurdity of his passion infused with admiration on his skills and style (no hint of any possible love relationship). Thankfully, it was an incredibly difficult challenge for hunters to bag a big bull elephant, and Markham lets slip some relief that Blixen refrained from a killing shot when days of effort finally brought them close. Here is some of her critical thoughts on elephant hunting:

It is absurd for a man to kill an elephant. It is not brutal, it is not heroic, and certainly it is not easy; it is just one of those preposterous things that men do like putting a dam across a great river, one tenth of whose volume could engulf the whole of mankind without disturbing the domestic life of a single catfish.
…
I suppose if there were a part of the world in which mastodon still lived, somebody would design a new gun, and men, in their eternal impudence, would hunt mastodon as they now hunt elephant. Impudence seems to be the word. At least David and Goliath were of the same species, but, to an elephant, a man can only be a midge with a deathly sting.

It is clear that Markham respects the wisdom and integrity she found in native peoples whom she befriended and learned from. At one rare point she touches eloquently on the social issues of race relations and colonialism:

What a child does not know and does not want to know of race and colour and class, he learns soon enough as he grows to see each man flipped inexorably into some predestined groove like a penny or a sovereign in a banker's rack. Kibii, the Nandi boy, was my good friend. Arab Ruta (the same boy grown to manhood), who sits before me, is my good friend, but the handclasp will be shorter, the smile will not be so eager on his lips, and though the path is for a while the same, he will walk behind me now, when once, in the simplicity of our nonage, we walked together.

I sought the book out with a special interest in the flying. For conveying the wonderful sense of solo flying in the wilderness, her poetic descriptions were marvelous, giving me much of the same pleasures I got from Saint-Exupery’s superb “Wind, Sand, and Stars.” Her early experiences and bush pilot episodes were more pleasurable for me that the later chapter on crossing the Atlantic. Here is a sample of some of my favorite passages:

We swung over the hills and over the town and back again, and I saw how a man can be master of a craft, and how a craft can be master of an element. I saw the alchemy of perspective reduce my world, and all my other life, to grains in a cup. I learned to watch, to put my trust in other hands than mine. And I learned to wander. I learned what every dreaming child needs to know -- that no horizon is so far that you cannot get above it or beyond it,

Harmony comes gradually to a pilot and his plane. The wing does not want so much to fly true as to tug at the hands that guide it; the ship would rather hunt the wind than lay her nose to the horizon far ahead. She has a derelict quality in her character; she toys with freedom and hints at liberation.

Like night, the desert is boundless, comfortless and infinite. Like night, it intrigues the mind and leads it to futility. When you have flown halfway across a desert, you experience the desperation of a sleepless man waiting for dawn which only comes when the importance of it's coming is lost. You fly forever, weary with an invariable scene, and when you are at last released from its monotony, you remember nothing of it because there was nothing there.

There is some debate on how much her editor husband contributed to the writing, but her biographer reportedly defended the view of her as the true author (see Wiki). When it was published in 1942 it received little attention, but later praise by Hemingway let to its rediscovery and a well-attended second publication in 1983. So glad it came to my attention. Now I have a good perspective to approach the fiction of “Circling the Sun.”

As a pilot and a traveler to Africa myself, I read this book with interest. I was prepared for an exciting travelogue concerning subjects with which I had some commerce. What I was not prepared for was the prose, which flowed like a great river: powerful, subtle, perfectly apt, and remarkably unselfconscious, to wit:

"Africa is never the same to anyone who leaves it and returns again. It is not a land of change, but it is a land of moods and its moods are numberless. It is not fickle, but because it has mothered not only men, but races, and cradled not only cities, but civilizations -- and seen them die, and see new ones born again -- Africa can be dispassionate, indifferent, warm, or cynical, replete with the weariness of too much wisdom.

"Today Africa may seem to be that ever-promised land, almost achieved; but tomorrow it may be a dark land again, drawn into itself, contemptuous, and impatient with the futility of eager men who have scrambled over it since the experiment of Eden. In the family of continents, Africa is the silent, booding sister, courted for centuries by knight-errant empires -- rejecting them one by one and severally, because she is too sage and a little bored with the importunity of it all.

"Imperious Carthage must have once looked upon Africa as its own province, its future empire, and the sons of the Romans who destroyed that hope, and are today no longer Romans, have retreated with a step rather less firm than Caesar's over routes that knew the rumble of calvary long before Christ.

"All nations lay claim to Africa, but none has wholly possessed her yet. In time she will be taken, yielding... to integrity equal to her own and to wisdom capable of understanding her wisdom and of discerning between wealth and fulfillment. Africa is less a wilderness than a repository of primary and fundamental values, and less a barbaric land than an unfamiliary voice. Barbarism, however bright its trappings, is still alien to her heart."

To which I add my own feeble praise: read "West with the Night." You will never be the same.

Beryl Markham was an extraordinary lady. She could train race horses to perfection, track lions and elephants, and speak Swahili with the natives. She was the first person to fly the Atlantic solo westbound. She was also an extraordinary writer.
Her autobiography, West With The Night is one of the best books I have listened to in a long time. The cassette version is ably read by Julie Harris. Several of the passages were so striking that we listened to them more than once. I particularly like the time she and famous hunter Bror Blixen faced down an elephant in the African bush.
She was born in England almost nothing is told of her mother - and followed her father to British East Africa where, it seems, she was allowed to pretty much "run with the natives." She learned many of their hunting and tracking skills, not to mention their language, but once grown the racial biases of her 1920's white heritage had taken hold. She remarks with only a small sense of regret that native children she formerly had played side-by-side with, now had to walk behind her.
She tells her life with such understatement that you may want to read one of the biographies that have appeared since the 50th anniversary of her historic flight.

2.45 stars. This was a book I could have done without. One of those books that after a point knew I was too far into it to do a DNF, so just wanted to get it over with. ☹

Beryl Markham certainly had an interesting childhood. Her father was a white settler in Kenya and he raised his daughter there. She was attacked by a lion when she was apparently a little girl. She, as a teenager, groomed horses…her father at that time was training race horses. She then became a celebrated racehorse trainer. Then when she was 34 she flew solo from England across the Atlantic to crash land in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia (she did the reverse of what Amelia Earhart did ~3 years earlier).

She told very little about herself in the book. The book revolved around her interactions with Africans as she was growing up, then about training race horses, then about flying. The end. I can’t remember why I sought this book out. It was written in 1942 by her. Oh yes, then there were the elephants. In the preface we are told she “invented big game hunting by air”. I don’t know if that was supposed to impress the reader — it did not impress me. She spent several chapters talking about elephants, their habits, her respect for them, and yet she also talked about the ivory tusks on a male elephant (bull) and that that was the reason why men hunted them. So if she respected elephants then how could she encourage big game hunters to kill them for sport….and for their ivory? I know that I am asking this when it is 2020…long after this sort of thing became illegal…long after this thing was condemned. But then again I think big game hunting is still legal. I knew a doctor whose office was decorated with a zebra skin rug…also various pieces of animals — trophies —he hunted on safaris to Africa. This was in 2013.

Ernest Hemingway adored the book…this is what he said about it: “Written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer…She can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves writers…It is really a bloody wonderful book.”

On the back cover it was said that “Her life deserves a second look and this book — a masterpiece — its rightful place in history.” So apparently others thing differently than I about this book. As well, North Point Press re-issued this book in 1983 — the book spent more than 40 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, and was hailed as a long-lost masterpiece. At that time Markham was ~80 years of age (she died three years later in 1986). The edition I read was from Virago, first issued in 1984 and then again in 2015. The Introduction was by Martha Gelhorn (characterized as one as “one of the most brilliant war reporters of the 20th century” by Lettie Ransley in 2013 in The Guardian reviewing her book “The Troubles I’ve Seen).

Reviews of “West with the Night”:
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...
https://www.historynet.com/aviation-h...
https://bernadettegeyer.com/2017/03/0...
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/24/bo... written by Michiko Kakutani (JimZ: spoiler alert: don’t read this unless you do not want to read the book…)
https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/en... (very interesting!)

I’m not sure how much we would know about this woman had it not been for her journaling. This is the first book I’ve probably read in ages from the point of view of a colonialist or at least someone living in a colonized country. While I loathe colonialism, having come from a country that was previously forcibly occupied by Japan in an effort to colonize Korea, and although Beryl Markham was able to do the many things she did because of her white colonial privilege, no one can take away all the amazing things she did or the wonderful spirit she embodied.

It was especially bold of her to take on “masculine” activities like hunting, horse racing, and piloting in the absence of all the advanced technology of today, and to do it all exceptionally well. In fact, planes were just being built then, and she didn’t even have a radio to mayday. Yet, she was the first person to cross the Atlantic by plane. Woohoo! Score for feminists worldwide!

Also, I’m not a nature lover. I’m actually more afraid of it and prefer to appreciate and respect it from a distance. Living in Africa in her time, I suppose she didn’t have a choice but to confront and cohabitate with and in her environment. So I have to admire her for that too.

Lastly, I was surprised by her nonchalance in the chapter where she meets a white slave. I’ll leave it at that for others to draw their own conclusions.

This was a engrossing memoir by Beryl Markham written in lyrical prose about her adventurous life from growing up in east Africa on a hardscrabble farm to raising and later training thoroughbred horses to her adventures as a bush pilot, followed by her momentous flight across the Atlantic Ocean. This memoir is also a moving and beautifully written tribute to her love of the soul of Africa.

Beryl Markham's love of flying was an added joy to be a part of. This was a favorite quote as she was learning to fly, "I learned to watch, to put my trust in other hands than mine. And I learned to wander. I learned what every dreaming child needs to know--that no horizon is so far that you cannot get above it or beyond it. These I learned at once. But most things come harder."

3.75



We swung over the hills and over the town and back again, and I saw how a man can be master of a craft, and how a craft can be master of an element. I saw the alchemy of perspective reduce my world, and all my other life, to grains in a cup. I learned to watch, to put my trust in other hands than mine. And I learned to wander. I learned what every dreaming child needs to know — that no horizon is so far that you cannot get above it or beyond it. These I learned at once. But most things came harder.

RTC

West with the Night is a re-read for me. The first time that I read it, decades ago when it was reprinted after falling out of print for many years, I did not connect with the book in any meaningful way. I could barely remember any but the most general details.

This time around, however, I was more keenly interested in the story, the author's life in British East Africa (now Kenya), the unconventional aspects of that life, and her becoming one of only a few aviatrixes.

Nevertheless my overall rating of the book has not changed; still 3 stars. One of my complaints is that Markham went overboard in creating imagery, as though she was dipping into a thesaurus too often.

Another source of dissatisfaction is that Markham is a bit fast and loose with her facts. She includes incidents that, verifiably, never happened including  the race between Pegasus and Wrack .

But, I must say that Beryl Markham had some traits and experiences that I find admirable.