Isak Dinesen : The Life of a Storyteller

Rating:
Summary: Masterfully Done
Review: Dinesen is a complex figure with more layers than fine pastry, more names than a prize thoroughbred and more moods than a sunset lighting up the Ngong hills. In her biography, Judith Thurman peels away the layers and builds a meticulous portrait laying it down coat by coat, thing glaze over glaze like a master. At times as complex as it is masterful, the writing sometimes over stimulates with its literary allusions, footnotes and citations; it does not, however waiver from telling Dinesen's essential story.

Being naive to Dinesen's extraordinary life, and unfamiliar with her own work and many of her literary influences, I found this book so compelling that I now feel driven to discover, for myself, the magic that the author reveals in Dinesen's life.

Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking biography
Review: Had I not seen the movie "Out of Africa" I would never had given any thought to reading a book written by a Danish woman of her life in British East Africa in the early 1900's on a coffee plantation. The movie was enjoyable and that provoked me to read her memoir. Getting beyond the fact that Robert Redford and Meryl Streep played the main characters, I became fascinated with the wonderful story and even more so the beautiful tapestry of language presented by the author in her book. A few years ago I had the opportunity to travel to Nairobi, Kenya and first on my list of places to see and things to do was a visit to Karen Blixen's farmhouse. The house and a small portion of the original lands remain intact as a museum. Although the area has been built up over the last 75+ years (the area is known as Karen in honor of the Baroness) there are still a few coffee plantations in the area and of course the Ngong mountains can be seen off in the distance. With this backround in mind I set off to read ISAK DINESEN : The Life of a Storyteller. I found the biography to be very comprehensive and exhaustively researched. "Exhaustively researched" not in a negative sense in that I found it fascinating to learn of the web of personalities that floated in and out of Karin Blixen's life including Hans Christen Andersen, President Theodore Roosevelt's son Kermit, Playwrite Arthur Miller, Prince Edward, George Bernard Shaw, Marilyn Monroe, Beryl Markham, Lord Delamere.... Moreover what she read and how much she read (and learned)are testament to what one can accomplish with 'self education' (especially so when there are no televisions or radios as was the case in the early days in British East Africa). The footnotes in this biography lead the reader into intriguing digressions. For sure this is not an adventure book nor is it more of "Out of Africa". Karen Blixen led a very interesting life and accordingly it is the stuff of a very interesting biography that is well presented.

Rating:
Summary: Out of America
Review: I saw "Out of Africa" in Copenhagen in 1986 when I was 21 and bought the biography in Danish, but I couldn't get into it at the time, and eventually sold it to a used book store. Then two years ago I came across it (in English) in a used book store here in Southern California, read it and adored it. It's one of the few books I have read more than once.

I love the movie as well, bought it on video about a year ago and have watched it many times. Yes, Redford is not a Dennis F.Hatton type but he's perfect. (In '86 I thought he was utterly miscast, despite being already then a huge Redford fan!)

Thurman took seven years to write this bio, and even learned Danish in the process. She truly cares about her subject and thankfully takes her time. Dinesen comes fully alive in this book, a rare accomplishment for biographers.

If you go to Copenhagen, take the train north along the coast (20 min. from the Central Station), get off at the beautiful, small, old Rungsted Station and walk down to Rungstedlund (about a mile). It was there that Karen Dinesen, later Blixen, was born and raised. She returned in 1931 from her farm in Africa, and began writing her first collection of tales, Seven Gothic Tales, published in 1934 in English and in Danish (in her own translation) a year later. She "only" wrote seven books for the next thirty years, but oh, what books. It is indeed quality, not quantity that counts with art.

In 1991 Blixen's house was opened as lovely museum with a small tasteful book store with books by and about Blixen (she is always referred to as Karen Blixen in Denmark), and a very nice and quiet small cafe. Upstairs is a wonderful exibit about her life, including seperate rooms with many books from her private collection.

The rest of the museum consists of her beautiful living rooms and study which all look as if she were still living there.

Behind the house is a parklike garden which is open 24 hours a day all year round. Here are the flower beds from where she gathered the cut flowers for her beautiful arrangements, the meadows with cows and sheep, wood benches placed along the paths, and the enormous tree under which she was buried in 1962. It is a magical garden, which she herself made sure would be preserved so that the public may enjoy as she once did.

Thurman's biography and the film "Out of Africa" generated so much interest in Blixen that it became possible to fund the museum, thus enabling us to travel back in time and walk with Karen Blixen in her garden and her house 40 years later. After you read the biography, you'll want to book your ticket to Copenhagen!

A bit of bragging: My parents live a mile from Rungstedlund, and I return to Blixens home every time I visit Denmark on my vacations. Rungsted anno 2002 is one of the most sought after addresses in the Copenhagen area, and it is easy to see why: Right on the coast, with meadows and woods still unharmed by suburban development, the scenery makes me sigh with longing just writing of it!

Note: The museum has a web site.

Plenty IS rotten in the State of Denmark, but Rungstedlund is pure bliss, and represents everything that is good and beautiful about Denmark.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating!
Review: I've never read "Out of Africa", but I did see the movie. I've heard plenty, however, about Isak Dinesen, whose real name was the Baronnesse Karen von Blixen. What a fascinating life this woman led. The people she, her husband, Bror and lover Dennis Finch-Hatton knew, met, and took on safari is full of names that even little-read people will recognize. Her upbringing, life and adventures in Denmark, Sweden and Africa are written here with a great deal of distance, yet they are made interesting to the reader. If you enjoy biographies, this one is very good - it doesn't read like an adventure novel, but allowed the reader to enjoy the idiosyncracies of its subject!

Rating:
Summary: Out of judith thurman
Review: Judith Thurman casts light on the fascinating life of karen Blixen a woman who not only lived her life on her own terms but accepted life's judgments on her own terms. If you were intrigued by the movie Out of Africa after reading Judith Thurman's biography you'll realize that there was so much more to this woman than a great love affair with Denys Finch Hatton; the trials she faced in Africa were the blueprint to her growth as a writer and a woman. It is a fascinating read which only made me want to learn more about Isak Dinesen and read more of Judith Thurman on ANY subject. Highly recommend it!

Rating:
Summary: The Life of a storyteller: A life story worth telling.
Review: Judith Thurman casts light on the fascinating life of karen Blixen a woman who not only lived her life on her own terms but accepted life's judgments on her own terms. If you were intrigued by the movie Out of Africa after reading Judith Thurman's biography you'll realize that there was so much more to this woman than a great love affair with Denys Finch Hatton; the trials she faced in Africa were the blueprint to her growth as a writer and a woman. It is a fascinating read which only made me want to learn more about Isak Dinesen and read more of Judith Thurman on ANY subject. Highly recommend it!

Rating:
Summary: magical
Review: Judith Thurman's biography of Dinesen is a must-read for any fans of Out of Africa or Karen Blixen's (Dinesen) work. Thurman almost does justice to the enigmatic persona that Dinesen was.

Rating:
Summary: A beautifully written story of a master storyteller's life
Review: This is a thoroughly researched and beautifully written biography of the life of a great storyteller. Thurman in telling the story of Dinesen's life, also presents a miniature guide to her work. She does an excellent job of portraying the character of Dinesen, the complex aristocratic independent mind, the romantic nature, the connection with a fairytale world of storytelling, the great courage and determination in making herself into a story when all appeared lost in her life. Thurman tells of Dinesen's childhood , her special connection with her father , the division between two families one wealthy mercantile, and the other more wild and adventurous. Thurman tells the story of Dinesen's long African adventure, the story of her marriage and its sad ending in divorce, and too the story of Dinesen's great love , Denys Finch- Hatton. The story of that love that plays a central part in what is arguably Dinesen's most memorable book , " Out of Africa" is a story of the man as hunter, adventurer, coming home to be feasted and entertained by his lover- storyteller Dinesen. This story which too ends with Finch- Hatton's death in a plane crash is at the heart of the first part of Dinesen's life. The second part after the African adventure is when she returns home and begins to make that writing life which would make her world- famous. The second -half of the story sees Dinesen more and more playing the part she has created for herself , as storyteller and personnage. It too however has its great human interest, especially in her relation to her mother ,her brother and her extended family. There is of course a vast world of detail I cannot begin to mention in this review. But Thurman tells the story with taste and a beauty as befits a true reader and lover of the work of Dinesen.
I believe it really does justice to the spirit of Isak Dinesen's life and work.

Rating:
Summary: Her life story has the power to console
Review: This is maybe the only author I know of where I enjoyed her biography more than the books she wrote. Isak Dinesen, she of the many pen names matured slowly while alternating her life between a pampered bourgeois life in Denmark and a wildly iconoclastic life in British East Africa that was partly feudal and partly anarchic.Two influences punctured her life for better or worse: her bout with syphilis that made her an outsider and helped shape her interest in huminity at large rather than her own household and the debt she owed to her dead love which she bungled when he was alive because she was in awe of him but who became her driving force and her hidden mythmaker once she had to cope without him. She was also lucky enough to live in a time when not every corner of the earth echoed with the ideas of everywhere else and that allowered for her originality where not all eccentric arrows had to be pointed into practical directions.
The chapters on her afterlife back in Europe show a brave and difficult woman who loved in retrospect and was celebrant, witness and victim of nostalgia for a gone world but she was also savvy enough to know that when life breaks your heart you can become a monster or a relic or all human potentialities wrapped in a finely tuned tenderness that makes sharing your experience an act of love and a gift to generations to come who struggle with their own version of alienation and heartbreak. Dinesen's Africa is no more but her roller coaster ride as a woman of talent and sometimes complex and dark passions is timeless.

Rating:
Summary: Out of judith thurman
Review: When i first saw out of africa in 1885 i was only 7 and like all 7 year olds i thought it was a long boring movie. Although i liked the music, my mom always played the soundtrack on trips in the car. When a few years ago i watched it once again i was enthrauled by it and wanted to know more about karen's life. it took me years to find out of africa in a book store and i read and loved it! but when it came to look for Isak dinesen... i could not find it anywhere so years went by and i was in wisconsin and i looked in a used bookstore and there it was on the floor on top of a pile well i got it and it was very detailed and very satisfying, read this book it is awsome i am amazed how Judith was so dedicated to this book ( she taught herself danish) and spent 8 years finisheing this book. it is one of the best Bio's ever.