Customer comments on this selection.
 Two Good Yarns in One
I purchased and read this book because of my love of the South American continent, the people who live there and travel. Living Dreams 1 Van, 3 Years, 2 Parents, 6 Kids, 15 Countries and Becoming a Functional Family Symmes writes eloquently as he tells the story of his own motorcycle journey while retracing and retelling Che Gueveras'. The reason for taking on the task appears to be, simply a need to search out and understand more about the icon. This book certainly gave me a broader perspective. Symmes own experience was well worth the read, yet he intertwined it with historical facts, present day observations and the travels that transformed Ernesto's thought processes and turned him into Che. I would have liked to know more of how this journey effected the author himself, but since Symmes is a reporter first, the story is written without much personal input. A good read for anyone contemplating a motorcycle adventure in South America.
 on the road with Che and Symmes
This was the second read after several years. Still enjoyable, I think mostly to people who have ever wondered "Who was this Che person?" in the first place. As I have always found the Cuban revolution interesting, I was curious about Che Guevera. Patrick Symmes provides us with a lot of background on the subject, interwoven with a motorcycle trip of his own, tracing Che's pre-revolutionary, self-seeking trip through South America.
Yes, Symmes must have had a lot of time on his hands and loved journalism as an art to attempt this journey, but I know just enough about South America to find his adventures fascinating. It's kind of like a real long article in Newsweek, but a good one.
in even better condition than described, seller too modest
this book was described as well used and I was willing to purchase anyway. this seller is too modest, the book although used, was in much better condition than advertised. I was pleasantly surprised. the seller didn't waste any time getting it in the mail either. I'd purchase from this seller again!
 More about the travel than Che
"Chasing Che" as you can read from the book description is a story of the authors travels through South America following the same route that Ernesto "Che" Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado took in 1952. The book is more about his encounters with locals as well as the hardships faced on riding a motorcycle through rural areas, and how they have changed since Che and Granado fist traveled through them. He describes these towns and their people as curious about the "outside world" yet at the same time as being invaded by our own culture. An example of this is how the kids in Argentina have never seen a BMW motorcycle yet are all wearing "NO FEAR" shirts. Also, in the mountains of Peru or Bolivia there is a parade with dancing reenactments of the Incans fighting the Spaniards while the dancers are wearing Adidas shoes. Throughout his journey he tries to meet people that Che encountered and visit the same places that had left impressions on Che and Granado.
Overall, this book is an interesting description of traveling alone through South America with correlations to Ernesto Guevara's own trip years before. The book could have been shorter and at the end I wished I read Che's own recollection of the events instead of this. If you are interested in the making of Che when he was still known as Ernesto Guevara I recommend reading this book to gain some insight into the events of his life from someone who has obviously studied the man thoroughly.
Oh and as a side note, for me the most interesting section of this book is the authors coffee shop meeting with a professor named Nestor Guevara (no relation to Che) who once trained under Che in Cuba. Starts on page 250.
Road humor, sophisticated history and analysis of Latin America, and Che.
The funniest thing about this great book is that the author, after studying and retracing Che's journey, doesn't really seem to like Che that much. This is definitely not an obsessed groupie who just wanted to zoom his motorcycle over the same dirt that his idol zoomed over. On the contrary, Symmes' goal seems to be to pour an astringent on the glaze that covers the legend of Che to try to bring out the real substance. He does a pretty good job, melding together what history books tell about Che with planned interviews and random dialogues with cooks, hotel clerks, and tire repairmen in cities and byways throughout Latin America to give us a picture of what people there really think about Che.
Symmes respects the reader enough to uncork the major philosophical and ideological debates involved, and you can learn a lot about Che's version (misguided) of Communist theory in the course of this book. But these discussions are interspersed here and there in a larger, rambling tale. It is not weighed down by discussions of history and social theory, as Symmes has a good feel for when to cut the history lesson short and throw down a chaser of humor or raw imagery. In short, the book is well-architected, tumbling along from humor to reporting to history to philosophy and back again. If you want to be a travel writer and need to work on pacing, here's a model.
Overall, one of the best things about this book is that Symmes hits that beautiful combination of a) doing his homework on Che and Latin American history, as shown throughout and b) putting that homework aside and letting the book and the journey come to him. Because he prepared thoroughly, he had a context for what he saw on the journey.
Finally, I found Symmes' style more palatable and less narcisstic and frivolous than that of Paul Theroux, a founding father of contemporary travel writing. Symmes writes with more of a sense of responsibility, more like a reporter than an egotistical artist-writer, viz., he feels a fundamental obligation, in the course of this journey, to inform you of the truth about Che and Latin America. He does not, as Theroux is known to do, overindulge in his minor personal doings and observations as if they were astoundingly entertaining simply because he did them. To be sure, Symmes does include anecdotes about his personal misadventures, but they are brief interludes, a well-timed shot in the arm, and the big picture is always front and center.
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