Home is where you are; home is where you find yourself.
Moritz Thompsen
Moritz Thompsen wrote only 4 books in his lifetime and he did not begin writing until his 50s. The scion of wealthy Seattlites, his grandfather was one of the robber barons in the west and his father was, in a word, impossible. Moritz was a bombardier in WWII, then a hog farmer and finally he volunteered for the Peace Corps in the 60's. Sent to Ecuador, his first book recounts his experiences in a poor coastal village.
Although he wrote only 4 books, he writes like an angel. Somewhat irascible, he is also self-deprecating and always good company. I recently reread all four of his books and, apart from having interesting stories to tell, his prose is so wonderful that it wouldn't matter much what he chose to write about. As it is, all his books are memoirs, compassionately describing the lives of those whose world he shares.
The first, "Living Poor" tells of his struggles to understand the people he has been sent to "serve". The book is, in turns hilarious, deeply poignant and burning with anger at how the poor are kept poor.
The second, "The Farm on the River of Emeralds" tells of his partnership with one of his friends from the village as they purchase land and struggle to farm it together - and to understand one another.
The third book tells of a trip he makes to Brazil, after his partner has kicked him off the farm. He never fails to be an interesting and thoughtful traveling companion as he reflects on his two years on the farm with his friend Ramon and the events - and his shortcomings - that led to his departure.
But it is his final book, published posthumously, that is his finest. Entitled "My Two Wars", it is about his experience making bombing runs over Germany during WWII and his battles with his tyrannical father. In the previous three books we have had glimpses of his earlier life and what led him to live among the poor in south America, but in this book, we come to know how this man came to be who he was. It is truly an epic tale and so skillfully written that it can be picked up and opened randomly to be read just for the pleasure of the his language and his company.
To give you a sense and to further encourage you to read him, here is a paragraph, chosen almost at random, from his third book:
The slow lazy negligent beat of the diesel is like the opening bars of some tremendously long Mahler symphony; it hints that we will be taken to far and awful places but at another's pace. We must now submit to the river's rhythm. All night in the cabin sleeping off and on, very warm in a curtained-off bunk, one of four, I listen to the piston beat of the engine - slow, slow - waiting for it to confront the push of currents, waiting for the boar to get under way. It never changes and five days later (or was it six or seven?) at the end of the trip, I will still be waiting, needing to have the memory of having struggled, at least for a time, against that unimaginable flood.
