Isak Dinesen (Guest Entry)

I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills...


So begins Out of Africa, probably Karen Blixen's (who wrote as Isak Dinesen)best known work. David and I visited her house here in Karen a few days ago; the rest of the farm is unfortunately gone to urban sprawl, and her former coffee plantation is now an exclusive private golf course. There is still a lovely view of the Ngong Hills from the lawn of the house. She writes of viewing buffalo, lion, and other game while driving and riding in these hills. By the way, "ngong" means knuckles in Masai, and the hills really do look a bit like someone's knuckles. The house is attractive but not grand, with three bedrooms and a spacious dining and living room. The most unusual features are a porch that runs the entire length of the front of the house and gorgeous mahogany paneling throughout the house. The last chapters of Out of Africa tell of Karen's sad farewell to her beloved farm after falling coffee prices and poor crops caused her to go bankrupt. I was moved to be standing in the house that she loved, had to leave, and never visited again after returning to Denmark.

I have been re-reading Out of Africa as a pleasant respite from computers and libraries. I highly recommend it (don't just watch the movie!) There is a special magic about reading a book about a place while you are there, and I find that I am able to better appreciate landscape or scenery after reading an author's description of places that they love. My only reservation in this re-reading is Karen Blixen's rather condescending and paternalistic tone in describing her "native" farm tenants. She cared deeply for these people and frequently doctored them and assisted them in other ways, but her choice of words does make one wince. Though she was Danish, her views reflect the British Colonial tone; Kenya never suffered the human rights abuses that occured in other African countries and as a whole the colonizers treated the colonized with decency. However, the legacies of a paternalistic system are unfortunately still evident in many aspects of Kenyan society.

I couldn't close this entry without taking the opportunity to give a plug for authority control. Karen Blixen is an excellent example of the need for a uniform entry for an author. Most of her books were written under the pen name Isak Dinesen, but she also wrote The Angelic Avengers under the pen name Pierre Andrezel. At some point, she also used the name Tania Blixen. So which form of the name should be in a library's catalog? Current cataloging practice is to use the form of an author's name that is most readily associated with their work, so since the majority of her work was written under the name Isak Dinesen, her author entry is thus Dinesen, Isak, 1885-1962. Now imagine how hard it would be to locate all of her works if each one had an entry under the author listed on the title page! Authority control won't save the world, but it does make the library a nicer and happier place to be.

Here's one last image of the estate.

Mary Sue