There are many reasons why I loved this book. There were sentences that astonished me, word-craft simple, precise, and searing. Paragraphs of description that somehow tied in a view, a history, and a personality with succinct power. Moritz did have a somewhat dour outlook on life and plenty of reason for it. His gift was to write of it with his personal life journey and to embellish his world view with the great connections of history,literature, music and an empathy for the poor, disadvantaged, and struggling people of South America.
He also is able to write of situations that left me laughing hysterically as in the "despidida"; the family ritual of mourning the departing traveler where the "male members of this tragic group, the uncles, the brothers, the godfathers, stand at the fringes. They stare at the floor, take deep drags on their cigarettes, and clench and unclench the muscles in their jaws. They are just a few seconds away from a total breakdown that would destroy forever the macho image they have spent a lifetime cultivating". I read another scene to my son about Moritz's avoidance of foods from the roadside stall that had me laughing so hard that I struggled to continue reading.
Moritz's first two books, "Living Poor" and "Farm on the River of Emeralds" also great books, were rooted in place in Esmeraldas Province of Ecuador. In "The Saddest Pleasure" he has left that place, left poverty in the village of his Peace Corps service and the farm he started with his Ecuadorian partner. In this book he faces the end of his life, returning to a "bourgeois" fate and begins this journey not knowing that it will redefine his life.
It may be helpful but not necessary to read Moritz's first two books before this. In the "Saddest Pleasure" Moritz expounds not only on poverty and place but more on what life is for, what life has become. I found the first two books to be much easier to assimilate than this but this again is richer and I will be sure to read it again.
I highly recommend this book to all avid readers I know.
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