Karl May
...he’d be a guilty pleasure of mine except for two things: 1) Nobody reads anymore so even Steven King or that stupid vampire lady aren’t exactly "guilty" pleasures nowadays (OK, maybe I’m conflating "guilt" with "shame" here but it’s close enuff cos we’re all pretty stupid anymore - like confusing "choice" with "freedom", but don’t get me started), & 2) The guy’s a helluva storyteller, so fuck off.
"So who the hell was he?" you might ask. Well, I don’t know much about him either except he was German so his last name was "My" & not "May" when you say it out loud, & that he was read by a Very Young Einstein & a Very Young Hesse & prob’ly a Very Young Hitler. It was kid-lit for teutonic cannon-fodder of the forties, so it’s sorta biedermeier rock n roll. Imagine Iggy as Robert Mitchum & it’s the 1880’s & he’s ridin thru the desert on a horse, but, we find out, the horse has a name, or so we find out in In the Desert, & I’d tell ya too, but I don’t wanna ruin it for ya.
I find it for a ¼ at the thrift store (the book, not the horse, neither the horse’s name except indirectly, thru the book) that’s across the street from Burrito King, a place apparently recommended by Ed Marimba of Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band fame, such as that fame would be, & they have way good burritos there too, tho the tacos kinda suck, which is certainly an argument for calling it Burrito King & not Taco King, wouldn’t you agree? Anyhoo, Karl, son of Germany goes throughout the land O’ Islam, making fools of & occasionally beating up people who are a lot shorter than he is & who call him "infidel" a lot. These infidel-hating short folk also say things like "Allah kerim!" & "Allah akbar" & "Karl! Your wisdom is as sublime as the birds what nest in the beard of the Prophet!" & suchlike. I’m tellin ya - it’s good stuff!
The other K.M. book I’ve found is called Ardistan & Djinnistan & it’s way hap too. Same Mitchum tuffguy in pretty much the same story except it’s got a more "philosophical" bent to it, whereas In the Desert has this ends/means religious theme, and ends up in the land of the Kurds, where K.M. describes a sorta fusion religion. Like Sikhs except Xian/Moslem instead of Hindu/Moslem. And yet like the Sikhs, many turbans are worn throughout.
Ole’ Karl wrote lots - the collected works auf Deutsch is like 72 volumes - but so far I only know of 3 U.S. paperbacks. The 3rd one - Winnetou - is cowboys & Indians. This is how German boys got exposed to the whole Western (as in "movies", not like in "kulture") bit, & I’m told that there usta be like boy scouts but instead it was little german lads dressed up like Native Americans. Which, ya see, I suspect to be the reason for there only being the 3 easy-to-find paperbacks. They ain’t "Native Americans" nor even "Amerindians" but just Indians, & of the noblest & most savage variety of "Noble Savage" & in In the Desert India Indians are all lazy & the Turks are conniving yet stupid as fuck, & the Greeks are all conniving. Only the North African Arab does well by K.M.’s estimation, & ya know that’s just to piss off the French. Not a P.C. cat, our Karl. Hell, insofar as the White Man’s Burden goes, Germans might be the whitest, and so their burdens the most burdensome - Karl doesn’t even like the English! Consequently, he likes the U.S. well enuff (remember it’s the 1880s). Reading this stuff, it’s amazing that the whole world didn’t band together & kill off all us white guys during the Grand Era of Colonialism. Not on accounta the exploitation, not on accounta the diseases, just on accounta the attitude. Like I said, it’s RocknRoll.
[Tony]
