BOOKINGS 07/97
by Linda Watanabe McFerrin
Word Count 1367

“No Mercy: A Journey to the Heart of the Congo.”
By Redmond O'Hanlon (Alfred A. Knopf)

If you've ever hankered to visit the Congo, but have no real desire to feast upon the plump, bacony bodies of palm maggots, encounter the Gaboon viper and the forest cobra or become a new home to tsetse-transmitted trypanosomes or a host of other tropical micro-organisms, No Mercy is the book for you.

Any face-to-face encounter with the wild, any jungle visit -- maybe even a night out amid the mosquitoes -- is probably enough experience to extrapolate that it is far more pleasant to read about the Congo than it is to go there and to appreciate the traveler who has the coj—nes to go, get the stories and bring them back, which O'Hanlon has and does.

Although O'Hanlon's plan to travel with his reluctant companion, Lary Shaffer, up the Congo and Oubangui Rivers to Lake TelŽ in search of MokŽlŽ-mbembŽ, a lake-dwelling dinosaur, seems a bit hare-brained, his credentials are sound and so are his story-telling abilities. He was the natural history editor of the British Times Literary Supplement for 15 years and in previous books has taken readers to visit the headhunters of Borneo and hostile tribes along the Amazon.

This book, which provides a fairly clear-eyed and gutsy picture of the The People's Republic of the Congo today, is peopled with pygmies, fŽtisheuses, soldiers armed with Kalishnikovs, sorcerers and government officials on the take. It's a heady adventure and O'Hanlon is easily forgiven his loquacity. With a naturalist's keenly observant eye, he rambles in his book through many kingdoms -- animal, vegetable, spiritual, psychological -- delivering his messages in an open-hearted manner so that you'll get the perspective without having to lose yours over a bad batch of monkey stew. He offers a wealth of information delivered in snappy oath-laced dialogue. If the book bogs down at a certain point, which it does, it's because like O'Hanlon you've lost interest in the thinly-veiled construct of a dinosaur hunt and become distracted by the Congo -- by parrots, cicadas, civets and bush babies, by black-casqued hornbills "big as cormorants . . . perched high up on a branch," by a butterfly flying "in a slow zig-zag vanishing in patches of shade, flashing back into life each time it crossed a scatter of sunlight," by the sweet, small, black face of a baby gorilla, the top of its fuzzy head smelling of fresh leaves.

And when you, like O'Hanlon, find yourself back, feet on the tarmac, you also might find yourself subtly changed by this visit to a dangerously different place, glad to have come back safely, internal compass no longer set on home but on the next big adventure.

© Linda Watanabe McFerrin

“Desiring Italy.”
Edited by Susan Cahill. Fawcett.

The premise -- an anthology of stories about a time-honored travel destination, Italy, written by women -- seems certain to please, but anthologies are tricky things. The beauty of gathering so many voices together is in the range. Unfortunately, in trying to make collections cohere, some editors sacrifice vitality. Individually, the pieces in this collection, excerpted from longer works by George Eliot, Edith Wharton, Barbara Grizzuti Harrison and others, are lovely, charming, full of personal meaning, but they flatten out collectively because of their commonalty. The focus of many of the stories seems to be more on the interior landscape than the exterior one. The sensibility --'Had I only come ten years earlier,' Margaret Fuller wrote Emerson from Rome in 1847 -- seems firmly grounded in the past. Overall, the stories seem of a time and place not quite in step with today. The editor's self-described pleasure is to follow in the footsteps of these other literary visitors. This is probably not the book for travelers who want to lay fresh tracks.

© Linda Watanabe McFerrin

“Washington, DC & The Capital Region:
A Lonely Planet travel survival kit.”
By Kap Stann, Jeff Williams, Randall Peffer and Eric Wakin. Lonely Planet.

Having guided adventurous travelers all over the world, Lonely Planet has finally turned its attention to the United States. This latest in a series of city and regional guides designed to cover the U.S. has all of the usual Lonely Planet strengths -- good maps, plenty of information about everything that matters, excellent values for the independent traveler -- as well as some new features specific to the U.S. series. The region-tailored format includes theme maps, an expanded outdoor activities section and a broader range of travel options including the kind of "top end" choices that might appeal to the business traveler. Perfect for family travel, this guide to one of the country's most popular destinations is well-suited to the needs of both foreign and local visitors. Overall, the focus is still on what Lonely Planet is known for -- great values, real travel.

© Linda Watanabe McFerrin

Linda Watanabe McFerrin is a San Francisco-based poet, novelist and travel writer. Bookings appears the second Sunday of every month.