Kapuscinski on the radio

- It was a half-hour interview which actually was recorded by the CBC at his home in Warsaw.
- he's a very thoughtful, eloquent man
- Much of it was devoted to growing up during the war, in Pinsk in the Poland/Belarus border area - I gather it sort of pingponged back and forth between the two jurisdictions throughout history
- childhood poor - the war hit on what would have been his first day of school. - grew up with War being the norm. Peace, when it came, felt transitional, tentative
- Pinsk was multi-ethnic then - Poles, Belarussians, Jews, Ukrainians maybe, and probably others that I forget. - Pre-war it was functional, the various ethnicities mixed and worked together in order to get by.
- his parents were both teachers
- hunger during the war caused him and others to ask the Russian soldiers for food, but all they could get were cigarettes.
- often went barefoot (as children, during the war) - because shoes were in short supply - still sees people in their fancy shoes and flashes back to when he thought of them as "luxuries"
- as a young reporter he was sent to both China and India (on two separate occasions) - and in each case the following happened: he was so overwhelmed by the culture, and got so immersed, that he felt as if he could spend the rest of his life reporting from there and writing about there - and so he asked to be transferred from there quickly - because as absorbed and fascinated as he was by it, he knew that first and foremost he was a man of the world and wanted so see and experience everything, everywhere - which, I think, shows remarkable self-awareness, especially in a young reporter, to know that one's worldly-tendencies were in danger of being trumped by a specific-regional fascination - to know enough about your own strengths and weaknesses to leave, and follow your "true path" before getting (permanently) drawn in to something specific (no matter how great it may be)

- C. Max Magee @ 1:45 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

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