Backpackers up and down the Gringo Trail in South America have invariably heard of, if not read, Rusty Young’s Marching Powder. It’s the story of his friendship with a British inmate in Bolivia’s San Pedro Prison, where inmates buy their cells, and some of the best cocaine in the country is produced.

I recently came across a yellow, crumbling paperback copy of Charles Nicholl’s The Fruit Palace. It makes Rusty’s Big Adventure seem tame by comparison. With the spirit of gonzo in his blood and copious amounts of cocaine up his nose, Mr. Nicholl goes to Colombia to write The Great Cocaine Story.

The time is the early 80s, and cocaine has wrapped its champagne tendrils around the brain stems of New York and London’s finest, and Nicholl’s publisher wants the scoop. The lengths he goes to and the risks he takes are astonishing — talking his way into a meat-packing plant in Bogota he suspects is a front for cocaine trafficking, bussing into the Chocó and then boating downriver to Buanaventura on the Pacific Ocean (a very dangerous thing to do, even now), and ultimately getting involved in smuggling a briefcase of 100% pure cocaine out of Santa Marta.

The Fruit Palace appears to be out print. No matter. It received many printings during the 80s and 90s and, though never quite a bestseller, there’s plenty of used copies floating around out there. It is essential reading for anyone interested in South America.

The truly successful politician has his finger not only on the pulse of popular opinion, but on the throbbing pulse of History. He can sense Destiny. He is not so much creative as an opportunist who knows what History demands, and provides it. To Fulfill Destiny you must first know what it is.

France’s new President, Nicolas Sarkozy, seems to be know exactly where he stands in History. His Finance Minister Christine Lagarde is quoted in the 22 July 2007 online edition of the New York Times as saying:

“France is a country that thinks,” she told the National Assembly. “There is hardly an ideology that we haven’t turned into a theory. We have in our libraries enough to talk about for centuries to come. This is why I would like to tell you: Enough thinking, already. Roll up your sleeves.”

This is Oswald Spengler’s prophesy coming true in as crisp and exact a way as he could have possibly imagined in his master work, “Decline of the West.”

For readers look for a synopsis see my essay “Is There Nothing Left To Say?”.

I recently finished reading Czech novelist Milan Kundera’s incredibly over-hyped and under-written novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Like sifting through a ton of cow shit to find a diamond, there is this one nugget of inspiration:

“Kitsch” is a German word born in the middle of the sentimental nineteenth century, and from German it entered all Western languages. Repeated use, however, has obliterated its original metaphysical meaning: kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.

Two pages later he nails it:

    Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass!
    The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass!
    It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.

He then proceeds to unwittingly describe modern America:

Those of us who live in a society where various political tendencies exist side by side and competing influences cancel or limit one another can manage more or less to escape the kitsch inquisition: the individual can preserve his individuality; the artist can create unusual works. But whenever a single political movement corners power, we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch.

The true function of kitsch is to prevent the self-examination that Camus highlighted when he said that “the only true philosophical question is suicide.” Yet kitsch is inescapable, and will haunt others in our deaths.

    What remains of the dying population of Cambodia?
    One large photograph of an American actress holding an Asian child in her arms.
    What remains of Tomas?
    An inscription reading HE WANTED THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH.
    What remains of Beethoven?
    A frown, an improbably mane, and an somber voice intoning Es muss sein! [It must be!]
    What remains of Franz?
    An inscription reading A RETURN AFTER LONG WANDERINGS.
    And so on and so forth. Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.

What is it about travel writers’ strange urge to piss in hotel sinks? First I read Notes From a Small Island, and within the first couple of pages Bill Bryson tries to shock our grandmothers with his casual sink pissing ways.

Now I pick up a far more excellent book, Moritz Thomsen’s The Saddest Pleasure (now sadly out of print), who waits a chapter or two to get from Ecuador to Brazil before he starts pissing in sinks too.

I mean come on. Everyone knows guys piss in sinks. We all do it, we just make sure no one is watching when we do. Cuz you know, we get sick of lifting that fucking lid for you ladies — so much easier to lay the ol’ trouser snake out all nice and comfy on top of the sink brim and let go with a refreshing stream. You just have to make sure to run the tap afterwards, or else the sink starts to smell like a urinal.