"The vast crescent backdrop of mountains began to merge into the darkening sky and a few stars glowed faintly through the incredibly clean air. It was both day and night, an overlapping of both, that infinite moment in the twenty-four hours that Juan Diego loved best..." -Herbert Gorman
Really an anthropological text, The Forest people tells the story of living among the pygmy to tell the story of the pygmy. On some levels it fails. Writer/anthropologist Colin Turnbull changes the turn of events by being there. His writing gets a tad nostalgic and even misty when he describes how amazed he is by the pygmy. He's more of an active player than is probably appropriate. But he does have some truly great insights. But the two sides are somewhat at odds. (capitalization and italics are his)"I heard him Murmur once more "You will see things you have never seen before... You will understand why we are called People of the Forest... When the Forest dies, we die." And for the last time I heard the chorus of that great song of praise: "If Darkness is, Darkness is Good."I have no recourse but to beleive that is is as he describes, but so much of the rest of the book reads less fantastically. It's minimalism is so much more effective when used to express the stunning newness.
"The Pygmies express various degrees of illness by saying that someone is hot with fever, ill, dead, completely or absolutely dead, and, finally, dead for ever."
"I'd hoped that I would taste something strange - all this talk of synesthesia - but the turkey was just turkey.I was still me, neither happier nor more depressed, and, aside from a bit of vertigo, the world was still the world." - Jess Yandow
