Isolation Read #53

(translated by Adrian V Lopez)

From a charity shop and I still feel cheated.

The back cover says, “Both are artists, Jews and nonconformists, on the run from the inexorable rise of the Nazi Party.” That should have been warning enough; that “inexorable”.

They pop into a cafe and Picasso is in the corner chasing women, while Hemingway is typing out “For Whom The Bell Tolls“, in another there is Orwell, all English and smoking…and when they get back to camp and hear a deep voice singing “Ole Man River”, who can it be…why Paul Robeson of course.

Bizarrely and so ‘wrongly’ every now and then the protagonists ‘see’ things they couldn’t possibly know in the future…Capa imagines the future of photo journalism through a few famous photographs from the Vietnam war and Kevin Carter’s ‘starving child and vulture’.

Nonsense. Stare at a wall instead.