Argentina Hotels Travel - Bad Times in Buenos Aires
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List Price: $16.50
Argentina Hotels Travel Price: $9.43
Your Save: $ 7.07 ( 43% )
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: Orion mass market paperback
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 910
EAN: 9780753805510
ISBN: 0753805510
Label: Orion mass market paperback
Manufacturer: Orion mass market paperback
Number Of Pages: 224
Publication Date: 1999-01-07
Publisher: Orion mass market paperback
Studio: Orion mass market paperback
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Editorial Reviews:
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When Miranda France, a 26-year-old freelance journalist, arrives in Buenos Aires to live and work, she discovers a city in crisis. "People said the city was sinking," she writes. "Of the 300 brands of condoms in circulation, only eight were safe. The traffic was out of control . . . More than 2,000 bus drivers were found to be clinically depressed." After securing a dilapidated apartment with a permanently crossed telephone line, Miranda France starts her life as a foreigner in Argentina. At night, she learns the tango ("danced properly it should be as passionate and loveless as a one-night stand"). By day, she tries to acquire the knack of viveza criolla (artful lying) to crack the bureaucracy of the local library and explores the legend of Evita Peron and her well-traveled corpse. During her stay, France encounters first-hand the choas and deep melancholy of the Argentine capital. Buenos Aires is, after all, a city where elegant street cafes overlook local workmen grilling hunks of beef on the curb for lunch; where rats outnumber humans eight to one; where investigative television programs look closely at the trend of rising hemlines; where a nationwide shortage of coins causes trips to the supermarket to end in squabbles over small change; where almost everyone France meets is in therapy (Buenos Aires has three times as many analysts per person as New York). Bad Times in Buenos Aires is a brilliant blend of humor, personal narrative, and rich historical background -- including a chilling interview with an army officer from the Dirty War. Winner of the prestigious Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for travel writing, Miranda France has written an insightful, vivid, and often laugh-out-loud account of daily life in the "Paris of the South."
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Stumbling on the Tango Dance Floor
Comment: Buenos Aires! The Latin Paris! Or so its residents like to think. To the annoyance of their South American neighbors, Argentines seem to believe that their country is a large chunk of land that split off from Europe and just happened to float down south of the equator.
The history of Argentine does not wholly undermine such a mindset. At the turn of the 20th Century, it was the 6th wealthiest country on the planet, with a potential as rich as the soil of the Pampas. Now, it is an economic basket case. What happened? And what is life in Buenos Aires like, living in the shadow of failed potential? Miranda France, an Englishwomen who spent several years in Buenos Aires in the mid-1990s, lets us know in BAD TIMES IN BUENOS AIRES, a fun and entertaining book. Though, to be honest, the title is a bit misleading. Despite the daily inconveniences and foibles of the city, there were good times to be had, as well.
Much of the book is composed of France's personal anecdotes of her own life in the Buenos Aires. She tells of the endless frustrations with poor telephone service and long lines for everything. She also provides us with a glimpse into the soul of the Argentine people. After the failed economic policies of Peronism, followed by the military dictatorships and the `Dirty War,' the city and its citizens seem enveloped in an all encompassing melancholy. The zeitgeist reminds me a great deal of that described in Orhan Pamuk's excellent book ISTANBUL, in which the residents of that metropolis live continually in the shadow of a once great, but now gone, empire.
Perhaps as a result, Buenos Aires now has about three times the psychoanalysts as New York City, the profession probably being more common than that of a shoe shine boy. Even the tango, the only dance specifically condemned by a Pope, reflects the sadness of the two dancers and the environment in which the dance came to fruition.
France captures the mood of the city and its people excellently and relays it to us entertainingly. That she is English probably makes her experiences that much more interesting, as the Argentines seem at once intrigued by the British, especially its royals, while at the same time acutely pained by the sting of having lost the Falkland War to those same Brits. If the residents of Buenos Aires are ambiguous about Europeans to begin with, France no doubt felt the ambiguity even more.
BAD TIMES IN BUENOS AIRES is not a difficult book. Its quirky title should be a clue that the book seeks to entertain as well as inform, and, for the most part, it succeeds. If you are intrigued with the more distant corners of our globe, those places where things do not necessarily always go so smoothly, then you should definitely check it out.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Let's be fair, there are plenty of Good Times too
Comment: The title of this book is a bit deceiving. It is a chronicle of the experiences (both good and bad) of an Englishwoman journalist in Buenos Aires in the mid 1990's. Not really knowing what to expect from this book, I figured that reading anything I could get my hands before moving to BsAs myself. It turned out that I was pleasantly surprised and found myself laughing out loud at points, always a sure fire sign of a good read. Using the experiences of her everyday life in BA as a framework to build off of, France interweaves hilarious anecdotes of daily life in BA, provides glimpses into the BA residents (they are known as Porteños) psyche, and gives an account of the all too often bloody history of Argentina. Although the France complains about the various short comings of BA, the chronic lack of coins, the crossed wires of the telephone system, the endless queues for anything and everything (all of which are still very much true), you can definitely tell that she has developed a soft spot in her heart for unique quirks that make BA what it is.
Argentina at the turn of the 20th century was the sixth richest country in the world behind the USA and the leading European powers. With so much promise for a grand future and such failure to achieve anything close to the possibilities it is no wonder the events of the subsequent hundred years are filled with political and economic instability. The rise and fall of Juan and Evita Peron, the various military dictatorships and the infamous `Dirty War' of the 1970's that accounted for the disappearance of tens of thousands of Argentines all invoke strong emotions that still reside just under the surface of Argentine life, often times coming directly to the forefront. France explores this common history and the effect it has had on the Argentine people. One possible result is the number of psychoanalysts in BsAs; per capita there is more than three times as many in BsAs than there are in New York City. Apparently it is a Porteño pastime to be psycho analyzed, indeed many find it hard to accept life without it, often working two or three jobs in order to pay for analysis.
For me this book gave me an idea of what to expect when I arrived here in the Paris of the South as it is often called. Although it speaks of a BsAs about 10 years past, it excited my imagination and curiosity in this giant Latin American city, the home of the Tango. The Tango is a sad genre speaking of lost loves, suicides, murder, and betrayal; a fitting theme for the constantly melancholy Porteños, something that really catches the essence of the people. France describes the dance, if done correctly, as passionate and loveless as a one-night stand.
Although I have found through my own experience some of France's tales have been embellished a bit for dramatic affect, the book provided me with a decent idea of what to expect once I arrived. Since France wrote Argentina suffered a terrible economic crisis in 2001 that sent the country reeling for years and it has had noticeable effects on all levels of society. Today Argentina is moving forward again and prosperity is returning, but it must be realized that much more than a decade has passed between 1997 and 2007.
Customer Rating:
Summary: perceptive if a bit too condescending
Comment: Like many English travel writers, Ms. France blends very well in the society she describes, and captures masterfully all kinds of moods, nuances and details. Her choice of subject for the ten chapters is a happy one, perhaps with the exception of the chapter on the pampas, a bit out of pace with the rest. Unfortunately, despite all her (I am sure, genuinely) best effort, English travelers abroad can never leave home a sort of superiority complex so that foreign ways of doing things inevitably end up looking just a bit silly! This book reminds me of Tim Parks' books on Italy: both France and Parks clearly love their subject countries, but can not help looking down upon it... albeit perhaps unconsciously! A great collection of pictures well worth reading!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Sorry for writer...
Comment: I just could not finish this book. It is so mean. Why should a writer bother to stay in a country just to critize everything, exagerate and write all her negative points of view. I was born in Buenos Aires, I live in Canada, I have live in Norway and I travelled a lot around the world (London included, city that I loved). I am not a fanatic nationalist and I think this book is so unfair. Some British hate Argentina and some Argentinians hate Great Britain, because of the Malvinas (Falklands) war, because of the Soccer World Cup, because of Maradona or Beckman... who knows... and who cares. I gave this book to a canadian friend who was curious about my comments about it, and he agrees that this book is awful to read. I am sorry for the writer, she lost lots of time in a beautiful city and she did not enjoy it at all. It is a waste of time...
Customer Rating:
Summary: Engaging and thought-provoking travel book.
Comment: Three-and-a-half stars rating, really.
I think that it is unreasonable to expect a travel book to be anything except the author's perpective on the places visited. French clearly brings her own (British) agenda to Argentina, but she also just as clearly makes an effort to move beyond that to present a balanced look at the city she was living in. I found it a good read (almost too quick) and a well-formulated one. It was worth the time that I took to read it.
Good points:
France owns her own prejudices. She is very careful to note when she was being cranky and British about something so that the reader is clear that it is her persective and not the voice of authority.
I also like that she did not try to take a sweeping 20,000 foot view of the culture, but limited her commentary to those aspects to which she had access.
Less Good Points:
She treated some subjects (the Faulkland Islands, for example) more quickly than they seemed to deserve and at times that left me with the frustrating feeling that there was more to say about a subject but she had already moved on to the next point. I do not think that it needed to be much longer, but a little more filling in areas that got short shrift would have been good.
At times her writing was a little too precious and tried a little too hard to make all her moments meaningful. One of the things that makes a writer like Chatwin so great is that he does not try to connect the dots for the reader and is very sparse in the way that he handles detail.
The final very best point is that I enjoyed reading it and it inspired a desire to know more about the subject-- which is, I suppose, the ultimate point. Recommended if you like travel books.
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