Nuggets from a Fugitive Journalist

Byline: Jack Matthews

Many years ago, while reading Lafcadio Hearn's 1890 travel book, "Two Years in the French West Indies," I came upon the extraordinary discovery that there are more shades and nuances of the color blue than I had dreamed possible. Sailing south from the gray Atlantic into the blue Caribbean, Hearn painted from a palette so rich and variegated that it is tempting to believe that no ocean has ever appeared so extravagantly polychromatic, thereby providing such a uniquely colorful experience for readers.

This testimony to his highly developed visual sense is especially impressive in view of the fact that Hearn lost the sight of one eye while he was still a boy, and was painfully afflicted for most of his life - not simply by the handicap of partial blindness, but by the psychological effects of a milky film covering the blinded eye upon his self-image. And yet, neither his morbid, though understandable, sensitivity, nor the chaos of a youth spent in …

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Publication information: Article title: Nuggets from a Fugitive Journalist. Contributors: Not available. Newspaper title: The Washington Times (Washington, DC). Publication date: March 24, 2002. Page number: B07. © 2009 The Washington Times LLC. COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group.

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