Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Hemingway's or Ruark's First Safari?

Both Hemingway and Ruark immortalized their first safarii's in books that endure today. The Green Hills of Africa and Horn of the Hunter are two of my favorite books of any sort.

If you had the chance - and a time machine- which one would you have liked to have been on? Pre WWII Hemingway or post WWII Ruark?

I think I would pick to Ruark's safari over Hemingway's first. The post war had better transportation, and the game was still good. Some of the locals were still as they had been for eons, and others had enough of the 20th Century in them to be useful. It would be tough to past up spending 8 weeks or so with Hemingway, I must admit.

For those who have read both books, what do you think?

With Harry Selby and Ruark for sure, the pure innocence and humility of them both would make for a very relaxing yet educational trip, Ruark's appreciation for the game he took is refreshing, especially by today's standards,.

Hemingway had an arrogance to him, like so much of his success was some how owed him. For whom the bell tolls was a better read in my mind.

Hell,,, pre WWI!!! With Burnham!!!!!

Or even Selous!!!

If I go by the books, Ruark without question.

Ruark wins with me by a mile.

Ruark by a mile. Love his work but Hemingway just seems like he would be a mean drunk and not someone I would want to share a tent with for a couple months. Ruark on the other hand sounds like he would be fun to share a camp with

Ruark, although Martin and Osa Johnson back in the '20s and '30s would beat them both.

Martin and Osa Johnson

I admit, with due guilt, that I have not read Hemingway's account. I have, however, read Horn of the Hunter.

Ruark's account of his time with Selby makes me jealous every time I read it. I was likewise jealous when I read DocRocket's account of his first safari.

There is a certain "wonder" that the first timer will have to have. Both Ruark and DocRocket did a stellar job of wrapping words around that feeling.

Ruark's experience, however is from a time that I have always wished I could have lived.

I haven't read Hemmingway either; just excerpts of the book.

I have read Horn of the Hunter at least once a year since I was a teenager (maybe it is an average of those years). In fact, I am planning reading it next week on vacation.

Just civilized enough I could take it and much wilder than it is today. What a time.

KC

I know it's not what you asked, but I'd pick pre-WWI: with Teddy Roosevelt.

I can't imagine anything could top the Ruark/Selby trip.

Bride of the Solomon's was too wild for me!

I would have had to fight Hemingway and may have got lucky and won. What would that have done to his legacy? I would say it be better with Ruark.

I would have liked to go to Africa with Elmer Keith. Ruark and Hemingway might be able to drink but it sure would be fun to see that tough little cowboy kick ass.

Almost everybody wanted Hemingway to like them. So I would go with Papa.

Ruark was mostly just a drunk by the sound of it, to the point that it killed him young, and even Selby had issues with him in later years. Ruark was too much of a Hemingway wannabe.

I think less of both books than those who have mentnioed them here - Green Hills of Africa I am not in a hurry to reread, with all the talk about literary gossip of forgotten writers from the 1930's, and Horn of the Hunter was a book about a man who wasn't much of a hunter beforehand, who went on a guided hunt to emulate Hemingway as far as I can tell, complete with gratuitous mentioning of his own war record to manly himself up etc.

I would rather go with Walter Bell, a man who must have been genuinely likable, to have gotten away with as much as he did. He was a true hunter and adventurer, on year long safaris into parts of Africa where white men didn't usually go.

A little perspective while we consider this question - remember Hemingway and Ruark were professional writers first and foremost, Hemingway of fiction and Ruark a magazine writer, and not big game hunters.

Ruark without a doubt. I was a victim as a young child of a Grandfather who passed Ruark on to me so I was biased early.

Later reading Hemingway I appreciated it but it couldn't displace Ruark.

The best part about Safaris of the day wasn't the amount of game and the price, it was the "gone to Africa" length of the Safari and the isolation from the modern world.

Reading Ruark Remembered really kind of pissed me off at him. Such a talent ended so early by drink (no teetotaler myself but all things in moderation!)

Of the two in the OP, Ruark by a mile based upon the accounts of their trip and for the reason Pugs just state - the "gone to Africa" for that length and that isolation.

Beyond those two? Bell. His hunts were extraordinary and during a time in which Africa was still largely sight-unseen.

Ruarks anecdotes in Horn of the Hunter really make it enjoyable. He talks of trip to Hawaii in which he and buddy went ahead, and his wife Virgina flew out days later. He spoke of how the women on her side of the family all had a strong resemblance to each other.

Ruark and his buddy got tanked up a lunch and were having a good time and headed over to the airport to meet Virginia's flight. In thoses days before TSA, planes unloaded on the tarmac, and you could go outside to meet them on the way in. The 1950's were also the Marilyn Monroe era of the platinum blonde, and unbeknownced to Ruark, Virginia went platinum before she flew out.

Ruark scanned the the passengers as the deplaned, and upon spotting someone with white hair that looked like his wife, he turned to his buddy and said "Oh cripes, Virginia has brought her mother!"

Then in camp, Virginia had the head guy, Juma, peroxide her roots once a week, which the staff never figured out. They figured Ruark was an old, old Bwana, otherwise why would he have such and old looking wife?

I always thought it was interesting that Hemingway was blunt in his admission of his hypercompetitive nature in Green Hills. He boldly tells of Phillip Percival admonishing him for envying his buddy Charles Thompson's trophies. That scolding seemed to have left an impression.

My reading leads me to believe that Ruark was a fun drunk and Hemingway was certainly more competitive and needed to hog the attention after a few. Either would have been a lifetime of stories.

Having lived for a short time in NYC, I appreciated Ruark's description of the NYC lifestyle. He called the group he ran with The Saloon Society. Since everyone in NYC lived in high rise small apartments, none were in a hurry after to work to go home and dit around so they went out drinking. Drinks starting at 5p right after work on the Lower East Side, dinner and drinks in Midtown, and nightcaps on the Upper West side, every day.

By age 35, his MD told him his liver was toast and he needed to make a big change, so he booked a three month safari. I think he wrote that he tood along three cases of gin and three bottles of vermouth. He liked his martinis dry.......

Harry Selby said Ruark was responsible for making him an alcoholic. I'm not sure whether he said that in jest, or was serious. I have read where Ruark invited Selby to NY, and Selby was more uncomfortable there than Ruark ever was in Africa.