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  3. Few modern travel writers excite more hostility and awe than Sir Wilfred Thesiger, who died in 2003. Despising the " drab unifor

Few modern travel writers excite more hostility and awe than Sir Wilfred Thesiger, who died in 2003. Despising the " drab unifor

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问题     Few modern travel writers excite more hostility and awe than Sir Wilfred Thesiger, who died in 2003. Despising the " drab uniformity of the modem world" , Sir Wilfred slogged across Africa and Asia, especially Arabia, on animals and on foot, immersing himself in tribal societies. He delighted in killing lions in Sudan in the years before the Second World War, Germans and Italians during it. He disliked "soft" living and "intrusive" women and revered murderous say ages, to whom he gave guns. He thought educating the working classes a waste of good servants. He kicked his dog. His journeys were more notable as feats of masochistic endurance than as exploration. Yet his first two books, Arabian Sands, about his crossing of the Empty Quarter, and The Marsh Arabs, about southern Iraq, have a terse brilliance about them. As records of ancient cultures on the point of oblivion, they are unrivalled.
    Sir Wilfred’s critics invariably sing the same chorus. They accuse him of hypocrisy, noting that his part-time primitive lifestyle required a private income and good connections to obtain travel permits.They argue that he deluded himself about the motives of his adored tribal companions. In Kenya, where he lived for two decades towards the end of his life, his Samburu "sons" are calculated to have fleeced him of at least one million dollars. Homosexuality, latent or otherwise, explains him, they conclude, pointing to the photographs he took of beautiful youths.
    This may all be true, but it does not diminish his achievements. Moreover he admits as much himself in his autobiography and elsewhere. In 1938, before his main travels, for example, Sir Wilfred wrote of his efforts to adopt foreign ways: "I don’t delude myself that I succeed but I get my interest and pleasure trying. "
    In this authorized biography, Alexander Maitland adds a little color to the picture, but no important details. He describes the beatings and sexual abuse the explorer suffered at his first boarding school. Quoting from Sir Wilfred’s letters, he traces the craggy traveler’s devotion to his dead father, his mother and three brothers. At times, Sir Wilfred sounds more forgiving, especially of friends, and more playful than his reputation has suggested. As for his sexuality, Mr. Maitland refers coyly to occasional "furtive embraces" , presumably with men. Wearisome as this topic has become, Mr. Maitland achieves nothing by skirting it; and his allusion to Sir Wilfred’s "almost too precious" relationship with his mother is annoyingly vague.
    There may be a reason why Mr. Maitland struggles for critical distance. He writes that he and Sir Wilfred were long-standing friends, but he fails to mention that he collaborated with the explorer on four of his books and later inherited his London flat. If Mr. Maitland found it so difficult to view his late friend and benefactor objectively, then perhaps he should not have tried. An earlier biography by Miehael Asher, who scoured the deserts to track down Sir Wilfred’s former fellow travelers, was better; Mr. Maitland seems to have interviewed almost nobody black or brown.
    His book is, however, a useful companion to the explorer’s autobiography, The Life of My Choice. Hopefully, it will also refer readers back to Sir Wilfred’s two great books, and to sentences as lovely as this; " Memories of that first visit to the Marshes have never left me: firelight on a half-turned face, the crying of geese, duck fighting in to feed, a boy’s voice singing somewhere in the dark, canoes moving in procession down a waterway, the setting sun seen crimson through the smoke of burning reed-beds, narrow waterways that wound still deeper into the Marshes. "
In Alexander Maitland’s writing, what kind of person was Sir Wilfred Thesiger?
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答案In Alexander Maitland’s writing．Sir Wilfred Thesiger once experienced beatings and sexual abuse，and loved his dead father，his mother and three brothers． Besides，he was tolerant andplayful.Alexander Maitland referred little information about his sexuality．
解析 文章第四段：书中记述了这位探险家最初上寄宿学校时曾经遭受的责打和性虐待。梅特兰引用威福瑞信中的话说，这位经历坎坷不平的旅行者热爱自己去世的父亲、母亲还有三个兄弟。威福瑞有的时候似乎要比传言中说的更为宽容，尤其是对朋友，而且也更为顽皮。至于他的性取向，梅特兰只是蜻蜓点水地提到，威福瑞大概曾和男人，偶尔“偷偷摸摸地拥抱一下或者有一点窥淫爱好”。尽管这一话题已经让人感到厌倦，梅特兰若想回避，就只能一无所获。并且，他暗示威福瑞与其母亲的关系“几乎过于做作”，也让人摸不着头脑，厌烦不已。
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