cripple creek
22nd July 2007, 06:09 AM
I would be interested in hearing anyone else's views on this biography of an extremely interesting individual who is now probably more well known for adorning the walls of a million rooms in university halls of residency around the world then the actual facts of his life.
My days of arguing politics late into the night ended a long, long time ago but I remain fascinated by humans who dedicate themself to a cause - in the case of Ernesto Guevara he had three causes in his life from what I can gather - to have sex as frequently as possible (something referred to in the fine film The Motorcycle Diaries), to be a good doctor and to be a revolutionary third world communist.
In spite of Guevara's ruthlessness and single-mindedness it is hard not to read Anderson's biography of the man without an enormous amount of admiration. By the time he was in his mid/late twenties he had clearly come to the realisation that he would probably at some stage die in battle or be executed but, for him, this was the price that he felt he must pay. Martin Luther King once said that if you could not think of a cause worth dying for then your life was probably not worth very much - or words to that effect. Guevara lived his revolutionary life according to this rule (as the title of the biog chooses to call it) with a zeal that is very, very rare.
I really recommend this book if you are interested in the persona behind the famous picture (the ubiquitiousness of which I believe Guevara would have hated as he never wanted to be a hero but merely an effective agent of social change and justice).
My days of arguing politics late into the night ended a long, long time ago but I remain fascinated by humans who dedicate themself to a cause - in the case of Ernesto Guevara he had three causes in his life from what I can gather - to have sex as frequently as possible (something referred to in the fine film The Motorcycle Diaries), to be a good doctor and to be a revolutionary third world communist.
In spite of Guevara's ruthlessness and single-mindedness it is hard not to read Anderson's biography of the man without an enormous amount of admiration. By the time he was in his mid/late twenties he had clearly come to the realisation that he would probably at some stage die in battle or be executed but, for him, this was the price that he felt he must pay. Martin Luther King once said that if you could not think of a cause worth dying for then your life was probably not worth very much - or words to that effect. Guevara lived his revolutionary life according to this rule (as the title of the biog chooses to call it) with a zeal that is very, very rare.
I really recommend this book if you are interested in the persona behind the famous picture (the ubiquitiousness of which I believe Guevara would have hated as he never wanted to be a hero but merely an effective agent of social change and justice).