Everybody's always citing the "he looks at you as if you owe him money" quote when they speak of Bob Ruark's best quotes about African safari. And while this quote was certainly descriptive and unique, its overuse has diminished its effect.

Ruark, however, was a master of the simile and other descriptive techniques. Everybody who has read him extensively has his or her favorite Ruark quote, and I am no exception. As I was reading "(a Ruark book)" for the second time last evening, I came across my favorite Ruarkism that I had forgotten about, and it reminded me of why I do so like to read this this flawed man's writings. I find myself nodding my head and saying to myself, "yeah, he got that one just right," when I read his descriptions of the sights and sounds of Africa.

I'm not going to give up my favorite just yet. I want to see if anybody else picks up on the one I have in mind. I'll give it up after a few of you folks post your's.

So what's your favorite Robert Ruark quote?

The one you just quoted seems the most memorable.

I just finished reading "Use Enough Gun." VERY disappointed. Almost like reading that last hemingway garbage, "True at First Light". It read like it was edited with a chainsaw. Guess alcohol took its toll on Ruark as well. Horn Of The Hunter was a much better read, but as far as writing's concerned, he's not in the same league as Capstick. jorge

"If a man does away with his traditional way of living and throws away his good customs, he had better first make certain that he has something of value to replace them."
Something of Value, Ruark quoting an old Basuto proverb.

This is not really a quote, but he titled one of the chapters in "The Old Man and The Boy", "If you don't care where you're at, you ain't lost".

Long time since I read it, but quoting Harry Selby while drinking whisky at the fire: "Man, this stuff tastes so nasty, but feels so good."

Use Enough Gun was published after Ruark died, and although I'm not sure, I doubt he had much to do with it at all. I tend to discount that one when I'm discussing his books. It's just a collection of chapters from some of his other books anyway. Having not picked it up in some time, I don't think there was anything original in there, was there?

It's hard to pick a favorite quote. I've read it so many times that I can recite the first page or so of The Old Man and the Boy by heart, if that counts.

There are a bunch of Ruark extracts I enjoy:

"In Africa you finally learn that death is as necessary to life as the other way around."

"I now know that I am a complete coward, which is something I would never admit before. I am the kid with the dry mouth and the revolving stomach, the sweaty palms and the brilliant visions of disaster.
But cowardice has its points, too. There are all gradations of fear, and greatest gradation is the fear of being known to be afraid. I felt it one day after a lengthy stalk through awful grass after a wounded buffalo. When I finally looked at him, and he looked at me, and there wasn't any tree to climb and no place to hide, I was the local expert on fear. At less than fifty yards a buffalo looks into your soul."

Well, time to give up my favorite:

The first time I ever heard a hyena in the bush and tried to write a description of the maniacle sound made by the animal, I was totally at a loss as to how to describe the eerie trible. I called it a laugh, but not a human laugh. A ghostly emanation. An alien war cry. Then I read what Ruark wrote about it, and knew that he had hit the nail on the head:

"A hyena's giggle is date night in the female ward of a madhouse."

Bingo!

Has anyone read the new biography on Ruark? I would be interested in hearing what it says about the guy.

quote:

Originally posted by Wink:
There are a bunch of Ruark extracts I enjoy:

"In Africa you finally learn that death is as necessary to life as the other way around."

"I now know that I am a complete coward, which is something I would never admit before. I am the kid with the dry mouth and the revolving stomach, the sweaty palms and the brilliant visions of disaster.
But cowardice has its points, too. There are all gradations of fear, and greatest gradation is the fear of being known to be afraid. I felt it one day after a lengthy stalk through awful grass after a wounded buffalo. When I finally looked at him, and he looked at me, and there wasn't any tree to climb and no place to hide, I was the local expert on fear. At less than fifty yards a buffalo looks into your soul."

Wink, that is a great passage of Ruark's writings, but I can't remember what book it comes from.

Anyone who has been in the long grass with a wounded buffalo, after reading that, can suddenly smell the grass, the musky odor of cape buffalo, and see, in the mind's eye, the staring eyes, and defiant dipping of his nose, simply daring you to advance further!

quote:

Originally posted by MacD37:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Wink:

Wink, that is a great passage of Ruark's writings, but I can't remember what book it comes from.

Mac, in the book called Robert Ruark's Africa, collected by Michael McIntosh, there are stories which were originally printed in magazines. This comes from Chapter Six of the book and it is a reprint from a 1952 (the year I was born!) article in Esquire magazine called "The First Time I Saw God". It is the first time Ruark wrote about Africa and in my opinion the best, probably because the newness of the experience is evident. The last line in the article is, "I belonged there all the time, I figured, and that's why I say I had to go to Africa to meet God."

There is another line in the same story which I find revealing of Ruark, "It is because I discovered in Africa my own true importance, which is largely nothing."

quote:

Originally posted by dogcat:
Has anyone read the new biography on Ruark? I would be interested in hearing what it says about the guy.

Last I heard from Jim Casada, the book would be out "sometime this fall." I don't think it's available yet, but it ought to be getting pretty close. Sporting Classics shows it as being available in November.

The last page of the "Old Man and the Boy".

I have only read Use Enough Gun and like some others I wasn't impressed. I should read Old Man and the Boy as well as Something of Value though to give him another chance.

FWIW, I was also very disappointed with the highly praised Hemingway's Green Hills of Africa. I've got many African books that are better than that. At least the drunks inspired better writers down the road which I do appreciate.

If my memory is correct. It was one of those things that registers on a eight or ten year olds mind. Somewhere in the Old Man series when they were still showing up in the magazine, I remember the 'Old Man,' stated something to the effect,
"what do you mean, don't speak ill of the dead. If he was old Toad Tucker the drunk when he was alive, he's old Toad Tucker the drunk when he's dead."
Don't know why it stuck, or if I misremember it and have misquoted it, but that one line about being honest about things stays with me.
Anybody know if it really was Ruark?
Bfly

Yukon Delta,

Hemingway had much better short stories and books than Green Hills.

For Raurk read "Horn of the Hunter" as well. I need to reread myself, its been a couple of decades.

Before casting too much scorn on these two, recall that there is the strong tendency to self destructiveness in many great artists and writers, especially those who are fantastic communicators of human feeling and emotion, whether in verse, prose, paint or stone. But the destructive trait means that you need to find what was great and what was obscured by the haze.

JPK

"Don't you agree with nobody or nothing that don't please you. Kick 'em in the balls and argue later. The Bible says turn the other cheek, but if you're smart you'll turn away from the slap and kick 'em in the balls. Clean fighters never wound up nowhere except hung on crosses and otherwise dead. You twist anything hard enough and it'll come around to your way of thinking and doing." From Poor No More. Not my favorite quote...but one from the last Ruark book I just couldn't put down...This is very similar to a passage from The Old Man And The Boy...
Brian

I gad to go find it, it's from First Safari in Use enough Gun.
It's right after he shoots his first lion
"I was suddenly free of a great many inhibitions. Every man has to brace a lion at least once in his life, and whether the lion is a women or a Boss or the prospect of desease by death makes no difference. I had met mine and killed him fairly and saved him from the Hyenas which would have had hime within a year or so if one of his sons didn't assasinate him first."

That was the first passage in one of his novels that made me say Wow.

I'm a big fan of Ruark but I don't have a favorite quote handy to share. However, I thought some here might enjoy seeing this photo I found on the 'net.


Holmberg (left) Selby (center) Ruark (right)

Unfortunately, I don't have any detail info about the photo as to when and where, etc.

-Bob F.

Robert Ruark used to also write a column for either the New York World Telegram or the New York Sun. (Both papers merged in an effort to stave off bankruptcy and became the New York World Telegram &Sun but to no avail)

A column of his that always stayed in my memory was about taking a young nephew to the NY Museum of Natural History and they were viewing a display of Neanderthal Man. The boy remarked that they didn't look like us very much and were "ugly". Ruark wrote a column: "I'm proud of him as my ancestor. He faced a savage world with nothing but two bare hands to start with - and a brain - and he won -or we wouldn't be here today". (I'm paraphrasing, of course, but that was the drift. I always liked the man who had a mindset like that and it was he who determined me to go to Africa. "Flawed" he may have been, but aren't we all?)

I believe this is from the Africa Adventure era safari, 1953 or so. The red dirt is a hint as Bob remarked it was frightning to see a pink elephant so close to NEw YEar's. Also Andrew Holmberg is along and I bellive that is the only Safari bob made with Holmberg. Plus, to my recollection, Bob on;y shot two ele's and the other was in the desert, this clearly isn;t.

_BAxter

My signature is one of my favorites, from "The Old Man and the Boy."

Isn't it funny how we quote Ruark ad nauseam, but never Ernest Hemingway? Ruark is the superior writer, IMHO.

In m any ways Ruark was one dimensional in respect to his body of work whereas Hemingway covered many different subjects/ideas.

I love Ruark, but the two are on opposites of the same field.

_BAxter

Here is Hemingway that I do quote...

A country, finally, erodes and the dust blows away, the people all die and none of them were of any importance permanently, except those who practiced the arts.

from GHOA

_BAxter

I like this one: "Most of my old boys are with me--Juma, a coffee colored Mickey Rooney, a cheerful rogue who upbraids me because I've brought nothing worth his stealing. There is my second father, old Ali, the cook who can take a buzzard and turn it into a turkey dinner. Metheke, the gunbearer, who has no front teeth and can blow his nose louder than the report of a five-inch gun. Chalo, another gunbearer and skinner. And half-mad old Katunga, who bays at the moon and is the best skinner in the world. He also invented penicillin quite some time before Sir Arthur Fleming heard about it."

Can't recall where he used this, maybe more than once: "As dead as easy credit"

Also: "Few things justify borrowing money, but going on safari is one of them", which is from memory and not exact, but you get the drift.

quote:

Posted 24 October 2007 18:10 Hide Post
Has anyone read the new biography on Ruark? I would be interested in hearing what it says about the guy.

I got ahold of the bio on Ruark, titled Someone of Value by Hugh Foster.

Lots of good info about him and his writing. Lots of details about his drinking and philandering. Don't want to spoil it for anyone who may read it, but his death at age 50 from alocoholism was well sourced and includes many sad details.

I think there is a new Ruark biography coming out real soon, I saw it advertised in Sporting Classics. There are already two out now that I already have. Someone of Value was the first, it has been out a few years.

"Somehting of Value" is a work BY Ruark. I believe that a recent biography of Ruark is called "Someone of Value". Correct me if I'm wrong.

Oops, RBHunt is right, as usual.

The new biography is called "Ruark Remembered", and is by Alan Ritchie who worked alongside of Ruark for the last years of his life. It was edited by Jim Casada and has a forward by Selby. It ought to be much better than the biography Foster did.

The Sporting Classics website has it available for preorder. If you get the limited edition, it comes with a bookplate signed by Harry Selby.

"Here is Hemingway that I do quote... A country, finally, erodes and the dust blows away, the people all die and none of them were of any importance permanently, except those who practiced the arts. from GHOA _BAxter"

A great quote, but I find it amazing that Hemingway wrote "none of them were" ... His editor must have been too much in awe of Papa to correct it.

Bill Quimby

"Go out there expecting to learn something, and to enjoy the heat with the dust, the mud in the waterbag and the busted springs on the hunting car as part of the spectacle, and you will have a wonderful time.

Go out as an innocent and you will come back wealthy and wise.

Go out as a wise guy, and you'll hate Africa.

I never knew a nice guy who had a bad time on safari.

I never knew a sour apple who had a good time.

Safari, like the sea, brings things out of man that he can camouflage in the city."

The other Ruark biography that came out a few years ago was "View from a Tall Hill".

My favorite Ruark Book is Old Man and the Boy.I got my English Setters Because of that book.It also inspried me to do the things I only dreamed of.I sold a bunch of guns I had collected 20 years bought land and built my dream house in Alaska before it gets ruined by the tourist companies.I thought Use Enough gun didnt make much scence either but good reading.I talked to guides who meet Ruark they usually let him only bird hunt when he would drink.Its a shame he died so early in life.

BIll, Were is right as them is plural, not singular. REwrite it another way...

...they were not of any importance...

USe was instead, ...they was not of any...

One could argue that them represents a singular entity but it is a pronoun, objective version of they and they is plural :-)


_BAxter

Hemingway was the superior writer IMHO, but a selfish, egotistical bastard he was. Bob, on the other hand, appears (through his works) to be a genuinely nice guy.

quote:

Originally posted by stagman:
My signature is one of my favorites, from "The Old Man and the Boy."

Isn't it funny how we quote Ruark ad nauseam, but never Ernest Hemingway? Ruark is the superior writer, IMHO.

Bob would have probably been more fun to hang around but he, in many ways, was a creep, especially to his wife Virginia. If he had had any kids, he would have been a creep to them too in all likeleyhood. Hemingway suffered mental problems that Ruark didn't and later in his life was the cause of much of Ernest's problems._BAxter

quote:

Originally posted by Supermotoman:
"Go out there expecting to learn something, and to enjoy the heat with the dust, the mud in the waterbag and the busted springs on the hunting car as part of the spectacle, and you will have a wonderful time.

Go out as an innocent and you will come back wealthy and wise.

Go out as a wise guy, and you'll hate Africa.

I never knew a nice guy who had a bad time on safari.

I never knew a sour apple who had a good time.

Safari, like the sea, brings things out of man that he can camouflage in the city."

From Raurk, I think? I can't place them but I know Hemingway better and don't recall them. Been too long on rereads of both guys.

Great quotes.

JPK

quote:

Originally posted by stagman:
My signature is one of my favorites, from "The Old Man and the Boy."

Isn't it funny how we quote Ruark ad nauseam, but never Ernest Hemingway? Ruark is the superior writer, IMHO.

Ruark may be the superior teller of African tales, and that's debatable, considering The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, but he can't hold a candle to Hemingway for raw talent. It appears the Nobel committee agreed with me.

Hemingway wrote the cleanest prose in the American language on about three levels, and people are still trying to figure him out forty years after his death. The same cannot be said for Ruark.