Bøker av Frederick O'Brien

Vait-hua was all savage; whatever bewilderments the missionaries had brought had faded when dwindling population left the isle to its own people. In the minds of my happy companions at the vai puna, modesty had no more to do with clothing than, among us, it had to do with food....Savage peoples can never understand our philosophy, our complex springs of action. They may ape our manners, wear our ornaments, and seek our company, but their souls remain indifferent. They laugh when we are stolid. They weep when we are unmoved. Their gods and devils are not ours. -from Chapter VIIIn the years prior to World War I, American author FREDERICK O'BRIEN (1869-1932) took a grand tour of the South Pacific, and the trilogy of books he wrote upon his return sparked a new thirst for all things exotic, far-flung, and gloriously "uncivilized."The first of these volumes, 1919's White Shadows in the South Seas, was a tremendous bestseller in its day, and no wonder. O'Brien romances the people and the culture of the island of Marquesas with this account of the year of drowsy afternoons and nights lit by mysterious moonlight that he spent strolling its sandy shores and basking in its island breezes. But O'Brien's is no mere travelogue: though he introduces us to beautiful young island girls with names like Vanquished Often and Malicious Gossip and discusses the vagaries of native cuisine and the time-measuring power of cigarettes, he also debates himself about the good and the harm done by Western traders and Christian missionaries and ponders the legacy outside influence will have upon the island. O'Brien offers a unique perspective on the South Seas cultures of old just as they were disappearing.OF INTEREST TO: armchair travelers, amateur anthropologists, readers of cross-cultural studies

The falls of Fautaua, famed in Tahitian legend, are exquisite in beauty and surrounding, and so near Papeete that I walked to them and back in a day. Yet hardly any one goes there. For those who have visited them they remain a shrine of loveliness, wondrous in form and unsurpassed in color. Before the genius of Tahiti was smothered in the black and white of modernism, the falls and the valley in which they are, were the haunt of lovers who sought seclusion for their pledgings.A princess accompanied me to them. She was not a daughter of a king or queen, but she was near to royalty, and herself as aristocratic in carriage and manner as was Oberea, who loved Captain Cook. -from Chapter XIIIn the years prior to World War I, American author FREDERICK O'BRIEN (1869-1932) took a grand tour of the South Pacific, and the trilogy of books he wrote upon his return sparked a new thirst for all things exotic, far-flung, and gloriously "uncivilized."In the second of these volumes, 1921's Mystic Isles of the South Seas, O'Brien explores the "merriest, most fascinating world of all the cosmos": the islands of Tahiti and Moorea. This is no simple account of ships boarded and sights seen: O'Brien takes us along on his journey of the heart and soul, to a land where a dance is an expression of passion, the sea is a living being, and fishing is practically religion. But O'Brien also makes pointed and poignant note of the inevitable death of this world, to which Westerners introduced the evils of alcohol and Asians were coming to dominate the population. This is a unique perspective on the South Seas cultures of old just as they were disappearing.OF INTEREST TO: armchair travelers, amateur anthropologists, readers of cross-cultural studies