- ISBN13: 9780312607739
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
At 23, Matt Davis moved to a remote Mongolian town to teach English.What he found when he arrived was a town—and a country—undergoing wholesale change from a traditional, countryside existence to a more urban, modern identity. When Things Get Dark documents these changes through the Mongolians Matt meets, but also focuses on the author's downward spiral into alcohol abuse and violence--a scenario he saw played out by many of the Mongolian men around him. Matt's self-destruction culminates in a drunken fight with three men that forces him to a hospital to have his kidneys X-rayed. He hits bottom in that cold hospital room, his body naked and shivering, a bloodied Mongolian man staring at him from an open door, the irrational thought in his head that maybe he is going to die there. His personal struggles are balanced with insightful descriptions of customs and interactions, and interlaced with essays on Mongolian history and culture that make for a fascinating glimpse of a mysterious place and people.
When Things Get Dark: A Mongolian Winter's Tale
Tags: Brand New, wholesale change, Mongolian, Winter's, A Mongolian, Mark, Things
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
This book caught my eye recently. Here’s my take on it.
First though, some background. As a kid I saw a movie about Genghis Khan and got interested in Mongolia. At the time – many years ago – it was communist and VERY isolated. Of course, it had always been isolated I guess – the word Mongolia used to be a virtual synonym for isolation at one time. (I must confess that I use it that way to make a point in a seminar that I give, but that is another story.) Needless to say, there was not much real information on it that I ever saw until quite recently and even now it seems minimal.
So, we now have this book. The author spent time in Mongolia recently as an English teacher and seems to have gotten immersed into the local situation in a time of great change. He lived in a ger – the circular tent looking house of Mongolia and took up some local habits. It seems winter there is pretty hard to say the least. Many bizarre anecdotes.
One of the local habits he took up was drinking a LOT and getting into at least one very violent fight – the scene with him in the hospital with kidney damage after that tells you how bad it was. A bit shocking, but maybe it tells us more about what things are really like there than we might get in say National Geographic.
Not you standard travelogue although there is some of that too. Give the author some credit for honesty, and he did seem to learn something important from the experience and not everyone might.
Some interesting perspective. Give it a try, but be warned that it is not for the faint of heart.
Rating: 4 / 5
Whispering Campaign; Stories from MesoamericaDavis describes his surroundings well and also recounts relevant history. He includes many intimate details of his own life: how he drank, loved and fought. Nobody would have confused him with a Mormon missionary. It is refreshing to read a memoir by someone who did not aspire to be a living saint. Few things are harder to put up with than a good example.
This is not to say that the author had no good intentions. Upon returning to his living space, he was surprised to find it clean, bed made. This was quite a change. Before he left, the room had been strewn with filthy clothes, dirty plates, cigarette butts and even a several month old rotting fish. While he had been away, a drunken neighbor broke in with impolite thoughts but was caught. As punishment, he was required to clean the place up. The local police expected Davis to press charges and have his neighbor, a family man, thrown into the Mongolian pokey. “That man,” one officer said, pointing outside to where the man was, “entered a foreigner’s home. That is not good.” Our volunteer, Huck Finn in the Orient, turned the other cheek.
Life in the bush mellows. Whether it be the enormity of nature or being part of the food chain, one cannot help but see things a bit differently. When asked what he had learned in his two years, the author replied, “The Wall Street Journal burns better than The New York Times.” No greenhorn would have said that. Five stars. Check it out.
Rating: 5 / 5
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