I loved this, and I'm going to order Said's collection that you mention. Do you also have recommendation for which of Berger's work to start with? I read Ways of Seeing a long time ago but it didn't make a huge impression in me.
Thanks! I think what most appeals to be about Berger is that his style and his politics feel thoughtfully aligned but never didactic. But yes, Ways of Seeing is not one that I return to. A lot of his travel reportage consists of short pieces inside his essay collections, including Keeping a Rendezvous, About Looking, and (more recently) Portraits and Landscapes, both of which latter collections focus loosely on his art writing. Landscapes has an essay on the West Bank which has been circulating online a lot in the past year, and Keeping a Rendezvous has a nice essay on Istanbul, among others. As for his book-length nonfiction projects, A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor is one I really like.
I loved this, and I'm going to order Said's collection that you mention. Do you also have recommendation for which of Berger's work to start with? I read Ways of Seeing a long time ago but it didn't make a huge impression in me.
Thanks! I think what most appeals to be about Berger is that his style and his politics feel thoughtfully aligned but never didactic. But yes, Ways of Seeing is not one that I return to. A lot of his travel reportage consists of short pieces inside his essay collections, including Keeping a Rendezvous, About Looking, and (more recently) Portraits and Landscapes, both of which latter collections focus loosely on his art writing. Landscapes has an essay on the West Bank which has been circulating online a lot in the past year, and Keeping a Rendezvous has a nice essay on Istanbul, among others. As for his book-length nonfiction projects, A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor is one I really like.
I read this back when and was certainly more open to the ‘Anatole France’ interpretation at that time