If Your Humble Blogger hadn’t been alerted to a question about whether Beryl Markham actually wrote it, the experience of West with the Night, (San Francisco: North Point Press 1983) might have been different. As it was, I found much of it difficult to believe.
Not that it matters terribly. It’s a terrific read, and well worth the suspension of skepticism. Or putting up with that voice in the back of the head going “Oh, come on.” Not that discovering indisputable evidence that Ms. Markham wrote every word would convince me that the various mauled-by-a-lion stories are exactly accurate. I know, I know, little girls really have been mauled by lions, and survived to become successful racehorse trainers and aviatrices. Or not.
Heck, if it was all made up, it was still fun to read.
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.
Hmm. Perhaps I should clarify: I don’t think there’s any doubt about the veracity of most of the book. The question is just whether Markham wrote it or whether she told the stories to her husband, who wrote them down. There may certainly be some embellishments and some things left out; there almost always are in any “true” story. But I doubt that anything in the book is outright fiction.
Addendum: in particular, I don’t think I’ve seen anything to suggest that she wasn’t actually mauled by a lion as a girl. Here’s what Hemingway said in his famous “can write rings around all of us” letter:
“The only parts of it that I know about personally, on account of having been there at the time and heard the other people’s stories, are absolutely true. So, you have to take as truth the early stuff about when she was a child which is absolutely superb.”
(See Author and Hero in West with the Night for the rest of Hemingway’s letter.)
No, perhaps I should clarify. I didn’t mean to imply that you had meant to imply that… Oh, heck, that’s not clarifying. I’ll start again.
Because I had reason to doubt something about the book, I wound up doubting everything about the book, but enjoying it anyway. And the story about being mauled by a lion is, as I read it, totally implausible, which certainly doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. If only plausible things happen to you, there’s not much need for an autobiography, after all…
R.I.,
-V.