It should be a movie, but if it were, how could it be better than the book?
Here, read the book "The River of Doubt/Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey." I did.
Excerpt:
That night, while the camaradas lay wound up in their cocoonlike hammocks under dripping palm leaves and a black sky, the officers took turns watching over Roosevelt in their tiny, thin-walled tent. As his temperature once again began to rise sharply, Roosevelt fell into a trancelike state, and he began to recite over and over the opening lines to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s rhythmic poem “Kubla Khan”: “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree. In Xanadu . . .”The author is Candice Millard. Another book of hers I read recently is "Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President" (about the death of President Garfield).
The links above are Amazon — commission earned — links.
You can read "Kubla Khan" here.
What poem do you think you would recite to yourself if you were dying and delirious?
I'm afraid it might be: "I get delirious whenever you're near/Lose all self-control, baby, just can't steer...."
This makes me think of another real-life adventure in South America, where a man is dying and delirious. It was made into a movie: "Touching the Void."
He hates the song cycling through his head and thinks: "Bloody hell, I'm going to die to Boney M."
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"Theodore Roosevelt’s opening line was hardly remarkable for a presidential campaign speech: “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible.” His second line, however, was a bombshell.
“I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot.”
Clearly, Roosevelt had buried the lede. The horrified audience in the Milwaukee Auditorium on October 14, 1912, gasped as the former president unbuttoned his vest to reveal his bloodstained shirt. “It takes more than that to kill a bull moose,” the wounded candidate assured them. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a bullet-riddled, 50-page speech. Holding up his prepared remarks, which had two big holes blown through each page, Roosevelt continued. “Fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet—there is where the bullet went through—and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.”
True story.
After delivering the speech, he went to the hospital where the bullet was removed from his chest.
TR in Mingusville, Montana...
“It was late in the evening when I reached the place. I heard one or two shots in the bar-room as I came up, and I disliked going in. But there was nowhere else to go, and it was a cold night. Inside the room were several men, who, including the bartender, were wearing the kind of smile worn by men who are making believe to like what they don’t like. A shabby individual in a broad hat with a cocked gun in each hand was walking up and down the floor talking with strident profanity. He had evidently been shooting at the clock, which had two or three holes in its face.
…As soon as he saw me he hailed me as ‘Four Eyes,’ in reference to my spectacles, and said, ‘Four Eyes is going to treat.’ I joined in the laugh and got behind the stove and sat down, thinking to escape notice. He followed me, however, and though I tried to pass it off as a jest this merely made him more offensive, and he stood leaning over me, a gun in each hand, using very foul language… In response to his reiterated command that I should set up the drinks, I said, ‘Well, if I’ve got to, I’ve got to,’ and rose, looking past him.
As I rose, I struck quick and hard with my right just to one side of the point of his jaw, hitting with my left as I straightened out, and then again with my right. He fired the guns, but I do not know whether this was merely a convulsive action of his hands, or whether he was trying to shoot at me. When he went down he struck the corner of the bar with his head… if he had moved I was about to drop on my knees; but he was senseless. I took away his guns, and the other people in the room, who were now loud in their denunciation of him, hustled him out and put him in the shed.”
True story, too.
The drunk left town the next day on the train.
Wow...what a story. Thanks for the tip. I'm not familiar with the author. Maybe I should be. But all of her books look like a good read. If you like those well researched historical books delving into lesser known events that make real life more incredible than anything fiction can produce.
Sounds like a fascinating book. I wish the video guy had slightly better diction because I missed a few words.
For some reason, the refrain from REM's 'Losing My Region' is my ear worm at random times although I often louse up the key lyrics and have the words "that's me in the corner, that's me in the spotlight, saving my religion" replace "losing my religion".
I recently finished reading American Midnight by Adam Hochschild who is also known for his book King Leopold’s Ghost. For a great fictional account of this period, written shortly after the events happened, read USA by John Dos Passos.
One doesn't seem to appreciate the mistakes made by Herbert Hoover that led to the doom loop that became the Great Depression. Coolidge was simply rudder amidships on Good Ship Lollypop. The opportunity losses of the decade were huge.
Roosevelts on memoir of the trip, Through the Brazilian Wilderness, Is terrific. The Story would make a great movie.
You can stand on TR's "bully pulpit," the platform on the back of the Pullman car, "Sunbeam," from which he campaigned for President, if you like, in Arlington, VT, at the "Lincoln Family Home." I know, he meant the presidency as a "bully pulpit," but the train car was his pulpit too, and it was certainly "bully." After visiting it, I feel kind of closer to him, and now I want to read his biography.
What poem do you think you would recite to yourself if you were dying and delirious?
Mama, come here quick and bring me that lickin' stick
Mama, come here quick and bring me that lickin' stick
How ironic: I am now re-reading The Roosevelts: An American Saga by Peter Collier, a fascinating comparison of the Oyster Bay Roosevelts (Teddy) and the Hyde Park Roosevelts (Franklin). Lots of details about Teddy’s African and South American adventures. There is much to admire about Teddy - as a politician, and as a person.
How ironic: I am now re-reading The Roosevelts: An American Saga by Peter Collier, a fascinating comparison of the Oyster Bay Roosevelts (Teddy) and the Hyde Park Roosevelts (Franklin). Lots of details about Teddy’s African and South American adventures. There is much to admire about the man - as a politician, and as a person.
All my brain wants now is to finish the couplet: Through caverns measureless to man, down to the sunless sea
For some reason I used to say those lines frequently after studying Coleridge in English Lit. Now, forty-something years later it would probably be a Tom Petty lyric , also two lines, he liked so much that he used it in two different songs: I'm so tired of being tired, sure as night will follow day,Most things that that I worry about never happen any way
My deathbed poem would surely be Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar”, which I memorized in toto at my grandfather’s knee many decades ago, and comes to mind unbidden more frequently than any of the other two or three dozen classic poems and declamations that occupy the recesses of my memory in whole or in part.
I have the 23rd, 46th, and 121st Psalms rattling around in there too, which would be even more appropriate as one faces the prospect of crossing the bar. But I have to rack my brain to remember them correctly, and they seldom just pop into my head and flow out freely the way Tennyson does.
I'm nobody, who are you?
Are you nobody too?
or
Because I could not stop for death,
He kindly stopped for me.
Dear birds,
when you see humans - fly fly fly away.
the narrator of that video is a bit hard to understand. but thanks - a book I've no read.
F Teddy Roosevelt, who, by giving us President Wilson over President Taft, introduced both the woke mind virus and reintroduced segregation, plus WWI. All for "progressivism".
This is weird because I was just thinking the other day that River of Doubt should be made into a movie. I read it probably 5-6 years ago.
I imagine it has at least been optioned.
The movie I'd like to see made from it would use TR's illness and resulting delirium during the expedition as a device to flash back to previous episodes in his life, such as his childhood sickliness and how he overcame it; how the deaths of his mother and first wife prompted him to abandon his career in the state legislature and become a cowboy; the incident out west when he rode 300 miles to track down and bring to justice a couple guys who had stolen a boat; the lengths went to lead men into battle in Cuba; and the speech he made after getting shot.
I'd also like to see him cast and played as a much more serious and intellectual character than the bombastic clown he has usually been portrayed as by Hollywood.
Yesterday was the anniversary of his death at age 60. Think of all he did in his short life and compare with modern presidents. He did indeed live in the arena.
Humans killed many southern north American bird species - so that ladies could adorn their hats with feathers.
no = not
BTW Candice Millard, the author of this book also wrote the recent “River of the Gods” about the search for the Nile’s source. The rivalry between Burton and Speke. Again, robust men. Burton spoke 33 languages. Such men no longer inhabit our planet.
Crap! I just realized I left out “Where Alph the sacred river ran” before the rest of the couplet I supplied. I regret the error and expect someone else might have noticed it too. For the record:
In Xanadu did Kubla Kahn the stately pleasure dome decree
Where Alph the sacred river ran through caverns measureless to man down to the sunless sea
Coleridge managed to keep that awesome rhythm for for the entire poem. Beautiful!
Dammit I effed up quoting Petty too. I hate typing on a phone!
Deathbed musing might as others say above revert to Biblical favorites, Psalms 23 and 51, John 3:16 and 14:3, etc. Maybe even Genesis 1.
I've not read Candice Millard book though I have read the Kindle sample and it seemed pretty good.
But I decided to read tr's account instead.
Terrific book and agree it would make a great movie. Or better 6 episode or so miniseries on tr's life with the delirium flashbacks someone suggested.
I also highly recommend his 4 volumes on the opening of the American west. It starts right after the insurrection of 1875 when Richmond VA WA the Frontier.
Great writer. No ghost writers for him. (or Herbert hoover)
John Henry
John Henry
Off topic: The problem with being rich and famous in earlier times was that you could afford the best doctors. Those doctors frequently tortured their patients to death. I was reading a biography of Wellington. He was going deaf and sought medical attention. The doctor poured some kind of acid solution in his ear. I guess this might work for wax build up, but, as a general rule, it is inadvisable to pour acid into a patient's ear. Wellington nearly died from this and was in excruciating pain for several months. The plus side is that he no longer sought medical attention for his problems and lived an active life into his eighties.....If you think some expert medical advice during Covid was off, ponder how for centuries the best doctors tried to balance the humors with bleeding, enemas, and emetics. I wish I had been alive back then. I would have invented a bellows that would enable the doctor to blow smoke up the patient's ass. Such a procedure, I'm sure, would have had greater success than those others I mention.
Wolfie, you STILL messed it up. It’s “down to *A* sunless sea.” Looks like the person from Porlock interrupted you too.
Two novels have been published under this title, by the way. One of them was a moderately entertaining post-apocalyptic story about what happens to airplanes on intercontinental flights when global thermonuclear war breaks out.
It’s an appropriate poem for a deathbed fever dream as I believe it came to Coleridge during an opium smoking session.
Millard's "A Hero of the Empire" about young Winston in South Africa is also a good read.
I also highly recommend his 4 volumes on the opening of the American west. It starts right after the insurrection of 1875 when Richmond VA WA the Frontier.
You surely meant to type 1775...?
I also highly recommend his 4 volumes on the opening of the American west. It starts right after the insurrection of 1875 when Richmond VA WA the Frontier.
You surely meant to type 1775...?
Sounds like the Brando scene from 'Apocalypse Now,'
I see London
I see France...
Dogma, how about Brad Pitt as TR?
And make the movie from trs book. Out of copyright, no options needed
John Henry
its a great book - i recommend everyone buy it.
And I loved touching the void - got it on DVD.
TR should never have gone on that trip, he was too old and suffering from the several health problems. But he was that kind of guy. At one point, he told the others to leave him behind to die, he was slowing them up.
IRC, he told someone he had to go "It was last chance to be a boy".
Kubla Khan would have been longer, but a "Person from Porlock" interrupted Coleridge's opium dream.
Jungle river films sound as though they'll be exciting. But they are only as good as the story. African Queen only worked because of great acting and a strong story.
The TR jungle story doesn't feel cinematic. Too much interiority.
Millard has written several good books. I really enjoyed "Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill". Churchill's escape from captivity while serving as a correspondent during the Boer War is a great story. Both Churchill and TR led incredible lives, almost too good to be true. Not sure we will see their like again.
For deathbed delirium, some edited Willie Nelson:
Turn out the lights, the party's over
They say that all good things must end
Call it a night, the party's over
And tomorrow won't start the same old thing again
Some talented writer, familiar with the period, should write a bio of Alexander von Humboldt--"The Greatest Scientist You've Never Heard Of." Explorer, naturalist, ecologist, a contemporary of Napoleon (who mocked him) and Jefferson (who pumped him for info about Spain's South American empire, and admired him), and a man who by the end of his long life had spent his considerable personal fortune advancing knowledge.
He might have been gay, if a contemporary hook is needed.
There are some bios in English but the ones I've read are workmanlike.
I've read three of her books, all are excellent. She also did the Churchill book mentioned above, and River of the Gods, about Burton and Speke. Speke not a likable person.
"Dogma, how about Brad Pitt as TR?"
How about Ed Norton instead?
William said...
. I wish I had been alive back then. I would have invented a bellows that would enable the doctor to blow smoke up the patient's ass. Such a procedure, I'm sure, would have had greater success than those others I mention.
Done in 1700's
The tobacco smoke enema, an insufflation of tobacco smoke into the rectum by enema, was a medical treatment employed by European physicians for a range of ailments.
Here lies the Great Unknown.
I'm starting to wonder if my memory is slightly faulty now and then.
TR wrote his own book about the adventure. Its quite good too. No doubt his previous experience with Mr. Dooley, led him to be more modest and less self-centered.
PBS did a great documentary about TR's trip.
"American Experience: Into the Amazon". https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/into-the-amazon/ and you can find it on Amazon Prime.
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