Ryszard Kapuscinski passed away recently. One obituary notes:

With prose that was punchy and lyrical, and in which he was often a central figure amid the action, he became a foremost chronicler of the developing world in his books. Likened to a modern-day nomad, he carried only a camera, a clean shirt and money. “The less you have the better for you,” he said, “because to have is to be killed.”

He met the guerrilla fighter Che Guevara in Cuba, political leaders such as Salvador Allende of Chile and prime minister Patrice Lumumba of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and strongmen such as Idi Amin of Uganda.

Famously, he interviewed a former employee of the deposed Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, a man whose sole duty for 10 years was to use a satin cloth and wipe the shoes of dignitaries soiled by the urine of the emperor’s Japanese dog, Lulu.

Jack Shafer at Slate would prefer his Kapuscinski without the “pixie dust of magical realism”:

John Updike worshipped him. Gabriel García Márquez tagged him “the true master of journalism.” But there’s one fact about the celebrated war correspondent and idol of New York’s literary class that didn’t get any serious attention this week. It’s widely conceded that Kapuściński routinely made up things in his books. The New York Times obituary, which calls Kapuściński a “globe-trotting journalist,” negotiates its way around the master’s unique relationship with the truth diplomatically, stating that his work was “often tinged with magical realism” and used “allegory and metaphors to convey what was happening.”

I read with great interest Kapuscinski’s account of his first trip abroad–to India!–published in the New Yorker. Kapuscinski didn’t speak any of the Indian languages; when he arrived in Delhi, in 1956, he didn’t even have English. One of the books he bought to help him with his English, from a pavement-seller there, was Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls.” He understood the dialogues in the book, but little else, either in the book or in the world that surrounded him. Here’s a taste of the dialogue:

“How many are you?” Robert Jordan asked.
“We are seven and there are two women.”
“Two?”
“Yes.”

And a glimpse into the surrounding world:

From Calcutta I travelled south, to Hyderabad. The south was very different from the north and all its sufferings. The south seemed cheerful, calm, sleepy, and a little provincial. The servants of a local raja must have confused me with someone else, because they greeted me ceremoniously at the station and drove me straight to a palace. A polite elderly man welcomed me, and sat me down in a wide leather armchair, surely counting on a longer and deeper conversation than my primitive English would allow. I stuttered something or other, and felt myself turning red. Sweat poured down my forehead. The elderly man smiled kindly, which set me more at ease. It was all rather dreamlike. The servants led me to a room in one of the palace wings. As the guest of the raja, I was to stay here. I wanted to call the whole thing off, but didn’t know how—I lacked the words with which to explain that there had been some misunderstanding. Perhaps just the fact of my being from Europe conferred some prestige on the palace? I don’t know.

Although I’m tempted to say that using Hemingway to unpack India would, of course, render it quite incomprehensible. And it doesn’t help to have your eyes and ears focused on the bizarre and the exotic. But what appears more credible to me as an admittedly shallow explanation of Kapuscinski’s magical realism is his technique of dropping out every second or third sentence that would admit a logic of causality. The world begins to appear irrational and, because of the closely observed, first-person narrative, quite coherent and whole!

Ryszard-Kapuscinski