The Saddest Pleasure: A Journey on Two Rivers (A Graywolf Memoir)

The Saddest Pleasure

The Saddest Pleasure is a deeply personal look at the people, poverty, beauty, art, music, literature, and passion of South America by an American who has spent most of his life there.

Moritz Thomsen was one of the early Peace Corps volunteers. Through his skill as a writer he vividly brings to life the people and landscapes he loves. The Saddest Pleasure tells the story of Thomsen's desperate departure from Ecuador at the age of sixty-three and his soul-searching journey through Brazil and the Amazon River. Along the way the author reflects on the meaning of his own life and the world around him, his friendships, and on the distances between people and cultures.

Thomsen's spirited observations are tinged with irascibility, as he moves from city to feudal countryside, from primitive conditions to the startlingly contemporary details of a culture in transition.

Paul Theroux's introduction to this book is a testament to Mr. Thomsen's remarkable life.

Moritz Thomsen, born in 1915, lives now in Guayaquil, Ecuador. He served as a bombardier in the eighth Air Force During World War II. At the age of 48 he became one of the early Peace Corps volunteers. His first book, Living Poor, chronicles his four-year Peace Corps experience of living in a small fishing village in Ecuador in the 1960s. He returned to Ecuador after leaving the Peace Corps to become a farmer on the Esmeraldas River, an experience he describes in The Farm on the River of Emeralds. He continues to travel and live in South America.