All the Wrong Places: Adrift in the Politics of the Pacific Rim is a 1988 collection of reports and reminiscences of his time as a journalist in Asia by the English poet James Fenton. It was reissued with a new introduction by Granta in 2005.[1][2][3]
 Cover of reprint by Granta 2005 | |
| Author | James Fenton |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Publication date | 1988 |
| Media type | |
Summary edit
The reports cover Vietnam during the late phase of the Vietnam War which ended in 1975, Cambodia during the early years of the Khmer Rouge, the Philippines of Imelda Marcos and South Korea before democracy.[4][5][6][7][8][9]
The reports provide some context for poems written later such as Cambodia and Dead Soldiers from the collection The Memory of War and the poem Out of the East from the collection Out of Danger (1993).[10]
The book was translated into Spanish as Lugares no recomendables: reportajes políticos sobre el Sudeste Asiático Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 1991.
References edit
- ^ Book Review
- ^ New Yorker 65.3 (6 March 1989): 112. Review 'All the Wrong Places: Adrift in the Politics of the Pacific Rim.'
- ^ International Affairs 65.4 (Autumn 1989): 759 (2 pgs.) Witter, Sophie. 'All the Wrong Places / Poisoned Arrows.'
- ^ Asiabythebook. review
- ^ Barbara Korte Represented Reporters: Images of War Correspondents in Memoirs and ... 2009 - Page 17 "The poet James Fenton, for instance, was an occasional war reporter in Vietnam during the late phase of the war. The reminiscences of his experiences in Vietnam, which form a part of All the Wrong Places, declare a literary intent that ..."
- ^ Douglas Kerr Eastern Figures: Orient and Empire in British Writing - 2008- Page 159 "... at the beginning of a journey that would take him to the war in Vietnam and Cambodia, James Fenton glanced at the ... Fenton in the summer of 1973 was setting out on a journey to see and write about a war in Asia.
- ^ The Listener - Volume 121 - 1989 Page 33 "As a revolutionary socialist, Fenton, in 1975, had no illusions about the Stalinist character of Vietnamese Communism but held the ... Am I wrong, or is All the Wrong Places also Fenton's journey to the end of the revolutionary socialist night"
- ^ Robert Burgin Going Places 2013 - Page 220 "British journalist James Fenton provides a similar, although perhaps more cynical, analysis of Cambodia, the Philippines, South Korea, and Vietnam in his book, All the Wrong Places: Adrift in ..."
- ^ Adriana Trenev Degas and His Dance Images as a Form of New Media Journalism 2008 - Page 16 "A well-known poet and journalist, James Fenton, discusses in his book “All the Wrong Places,” the ..."
- ^ James Fenton: 21st century renaissance man 18 Nov 2007 "The powerful poems he wrote about the period ('Cambodia' and 'Dead Soldiers' from The Memory of War and 'Out of the East', from Out of Danger, 1993) were published much later, as was 'Children in Exile', which deals with the adoption of Cambodian children who had survived Pol Pot. There is, in All the Wrong Places, a collection of Fenton's Far Eastern war reports, in which he speaks to a guerrilla leader in the Philippines. 'He [the commander] said: "Those people in Vietnam and Cambodia - do you think they have a better life now?" It was a point on which I could give him no reassurance at all.'"