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Books on Portugal: Other Books

by Jose Saramago

(Harvest)

ISBN: 0156007134
452pp

Jose Saramago came to the attention of the world as a giant of Portuguese writing when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. His novels, while brilliantly imaginative, are pessimistic in tone, and find their major themes in the importance of memory and communion with the past. Journal to Portugal is written in the same vein, as its subtitle: ‘In Pursuit of Portugal's History and Culture' suggests. This is emphatically not a book for those wishing to prepare themselves for a trip to Portugal. It demands total surrender to the ego of the ‘the traveler', and a corresponding commitment to the minutiae of his rueful trudge across country from village to village, church to church (to church!) and museum to museum. Think gray whimsy - over 400 pages of it. For die hard fans of the great man only.

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by John Pollack

Pantheon Books

ISBN: 0375422579
291pp

Former Washington speechwriter John Pollock—burned out on the hypocrisy and hyperbole of Beltway blather—took a year's sabbatical from his job with Representative David Bonior to fulfill a childhood dream. That dream was to build a boat completely from wine corks, a whole lot of wine corks, and then sail it down Portugal's Douro River: the home of cork. This “creative sabbatical” from the very real world of politics would be, according to the author, the “antithesis of everything Washington.”
Thus, at age 33, Pollack set out on a quixotic adventure to realize a dream that he had nurtured since childhood. He began collecting corks from an early age. Raised in a home where expectations not rules held sway, his parents cultivated a sense of adventure in their children. This was done mainly through their work in Michigan politics and in family travels around the world. On one such trip, in India, tragedy struck on a river. Pollack lost his sister when she fell into and was swept down the rapids never to be found. Part of Pollack's obsession clearly dates to this incident, which occurred when he was eleven.
In order to build the boat, he went around to Washington restaurants to collect their used corks to add to his twenty-year collection. Large donations—of both used corks and new rubber bands—made it possible to complete the cork boat. Made up of 165,321 corks, and built with his childhood best friend, the boat was shipped to Portugal in 2002. There, Pollack and friends and family spent 17 days navigating the Douro River. The book is a lovely read that combines purpose, the overcoming of great obstacles, and a sense of what is possible. In a cynical age, this is a refreshing and even inspiring work. It includes asides on President Clinton; for whom Pollack worked; the writer's family; Portugal; cork; rubber bands; and more. Beautifully written.

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