It’s the year 1891. We steam into San Francisco through the Golden Gate ready to meet the city and welcome ourselves into this amazing American experience. We board a cable car to Pacific beach. Advertisements of all kinds defile the beauty of the wharf. Lazy sea-lions sun themselves on a rock 100 yards from shore.
We make our way to the Palace Hotel.
“Night fell over the Pacific, and the white sea-fog whipped through the streets, dimming the splendor of the electric lights.”
We dine at the Bohemian Club.
“The ruler of the place is an owl – and owl standing upon a skull and cross-bones.”
After long walks and meanderings in the city, we close the evening at the hotel bar.
The women are beautiful, the men are boisterous.
“Besides, I am hopelessly in love with about eight American maidens — all perfectly delightful till the next one comes into the room.”
“Man is fire and women is tow,
And the devil he comes and begins to blow.”
You are the spark and fuel to flame.
The roaring winds of the Pacific make us drunk.
The dream of Californication is a fairy tale — “her merry maidens, her strong, swaggering men, and her wealth of gold and pride.”
American Salmon – We go fishing! The most endearing fish story I have ever read!!! You must read this glorious part. I want to be in this play, and fight Chinook to the shallows, land them on the grassy knoll by the gills, and have them splash me up and down with cool mountain water. American Salmon!!!
We visit Yellowstone. Bubbling lime crusted pools, boiling hot and bellowing sulfurous must into the heavens. We climb the granite dome and witness the splendor of the falls. We share a kiss at sunset. All of our dreams are coming true.
“Then we lay on the grass and laughed with sheer bliss of being alive.”
We go on through Salt Lake and witness the Mormons. We laugh at the gentiles. Are we the gentiles? We continue to Chicago, Buffalo and Niagara Falls.
Thus ends our American adventure… for now.
American Notes by Rudyard Kipling Book Review
My highlights and annotations:
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
Book last read: 2025-10-12 19:25:36
Chapter 638: I. AT THE GOLDEN GATE
Annotation
Chapter progress: 6.25%
Highlight: San Francisco is a mad city — inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people, whose women are of a remarkable beauty.
Notes: Hello ladies.
Chapter 638: I. AT THE GOLDEN GATE
Annotation
Chapter progress: 18.75%
Highlight: Understand clearly — and this letter is written after a thousand miles of experiences — that money will not buy you service in the West
Notes: To busy being “free”.
Chapter 638: I. AT THE GOLDEN GATE
Annotation
Chapter progress: 25.0%
Highlight: The spittoons were on the staircases, in each bedroom — yea, and in chambers even more sacred than these. They chased one into retirement, but they blossomed in chiefest splendor round the bar, and they were all used, every reeking one of them
Notes: Eeewwww.
Chapter 638: I. AT THE GOLDEN GATE
Annotation
Chapter progress: 28.12%
Highlight: After all, it really did not matter what I said. He could not understand
Notes: American
Chapter 638: I. AT THE GOLDEN GATE
Annotation
Chapter progress: 37.5%
Highlight: Let me watch the people in the cars and try to find out in what manner they differ from us, their ancestors.
Notes: The difference is startling.
Chapter 638: I. AT THE GOLDEN GATE
Annotation
Chapter progress: 43.75%
Highlight: the American has no language. He is dialect, slang, provincialism, accent, and so forth
Notes: Boy howdy.
Chapter 638: I. AT THE GOLDEN GATE
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.88%
Highlight: Originally the cliffs and their approaches must have been pretty, but they have been so carefully defiled with advertisements that they are now one big blistered abomination
Notes: Eat buffalo wings at hooters.
Chapter 638: I. AT THE GOLDEN GATE
Annotation
Chapter progress: 75.0%
Highlight: The ruler of the place is an owl — an owl standing upon a skull and cross-bones, showing forth grimly the wisdom of the man of letters and the end of his hopes for immortality
Notes: Bohemian club San Fracisco.
Chapter 638: I. AT THE GOLDEN GATE
Highlight
Chapter progress: 93.75%
Highlight: Professor Bryce’s book on the American Republic
Chapter 638: I. AT THE GOLDEN GATE
Annotation
Chapter progress: 100.0%
Highlight: And yet the first thing I have been taught to believe is that money was everything in America!
Notes: The money is fake.
Chapter 639: II. AMERICAN POLITICS
Annotation
Chapter progress: 4.55%
Highlight: Some of them were bloated, and they all swore cheerfully till the heavy gold watch-chains on their fat stomachs rose and fell again; but they talked over their liquor as men who had power and unquestioned access to places of trust and profit.
Notes: American politicians.
Chapter 639: II. AMERICAN POLITICS
Annotation
Chapter progress: 12.5%
Highlight: Besides, I am hopelessly in love with about eight American maidens — all perfectly delightful till the next one comes into the room.
Notes: American Beauty.
Chapter 639: II. AMERICAN POLITICS
Annotation
Chapter progress: 24.14%
Highlight: but the girls of America are above and beyond them all. They are clever, they can talk — yea, it is said that they think. Certainly they have an appearance of so doing which is delightfully deceptive.
Notes: American Beauty
Chapter 639: II. AMERICAN POLITICS
Annotation
Chapter progress: 68.75%
Highlight: miscegenation
Notes: Interbreeding of the races.
Chapter 639: II. AMERICAN POLITICS
Annotation
Chapter progress: 90.62%
Highlight: The judge is a great man, but give thy presents to the clerk,” as the proverb saith.
Notes: Don’t toss your pearls to the swine.
Chapter 641: IV. THE YELLOWSTONE
Annotation
Chapter progress: 24.0%
Highlight: America is a free country, but the citizens look down on the soldier
Notes: Essential workers held in check.
Chapter 642: V. CHICAGO
Annotation
Chapter progress: 7.69%
Highlight: They told me to go to the Palmer House, which is overmuch gilded and mirrored, and there I found a huge hall of tessellated marble crammed with people talking about money, and spitting about everywhere
Notes: Chicago and spitting tobacco.
Chapter 642: V. CHICAGO
Annotation
Chapter progress: 11.54%
Highlight: Except in London — and I have forgotten what London was like — I had never seen so many white people together, and never such a collection of miserables
Notes: Hehe.
Chapter 642: V. CHICAGO
Annotation
Chapter progress: 23.08%
Highlight: The papers tell their clientele in language fitted to their comprehension that the snarling together of telegraph-wires, the heaving up of houses, and the making of money is progress.
Notes: American media is dead.
Chapter 642: V. CHICAGO
Annotation
Chapter progress: 42.31%
Highlight: All that Sunday I listened to people who said that the mere fact of spiking down strips of iron to wood, and getting a steam and iron thing to run along them was progress, that the telephone was progress, and the net-work of wires overhead was progress. They repeated their statements again and again
Notes: Net-work 1890 archaic.
Chapter 642: V. CHICAGO
Annotation
Chapter progress: 57.69%
Highlight: effeteness
Notes: Over refind and ineffectual.
Chapter 642: V. CHICAGO
Annotation
Chapter progress: 73.08%
Highlight: The East is not the West, and these men must continue to deal with the machinery of life, and to call it progress
Notes: Western curse.
Chapter 642: V. CHICAGO
Annotation
Chapter progress: 100.0%
Highlight: But a pig is only the unclean animal — the forbidden of the prophet
Notes: Gruesome description of slaughterhouse.
Chapter 643: VI. THE AMERICAN ARMY
Annotation
Chapter progress: 64.29%
Highlight: The tawdry mysticism and the borrowing from Freemasonry serve the low caste Swede and Dane, the Welshman and the Cornish cotter, just as well as a highly organized heaven.
Notes: Freemason police oranization.
Chapter 643: VI. THE AMERICAN ARMY
Annotation
Chapter progress: 92.86%
Highlight: A man rose up and told them that they were the chosen of God, the elect of Israel; that they were to obey their priests, and that there was a good time coming
Notes: Hebrew homework.
Chapter 644: VII. AMERICA’S DEFENCELESS COASTS
Annotation
Chapter progress: 61.54%
Highlight: Ransom at long range will be about the size of it — cash or crash.
Notes: 5g warfare.
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