What do you think?
Rate this book
Notes from the Rainforest
Notes from the Rainforest is the diary of two months spent in a cabin on Vancouver Island. The diary consists of entries written at night in the silence of the forest. The entries -- absorbing, provocative, playful, and profound -- range from philosophical aphorisms to acid comments on the state of communism today, the excesses of the American way of life, the characteristics of Canadian culture, and the vagaries of history and human nature.
126 pages, Paperback
First published June 22, 1988
2 people are currently reading
12 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 16, 2025
If you want a fresh, unusual, striking critique of culture and politics that'll make you both laugh and sit in silence, this is the book for you.
Faludy is an old-world gentleman. He's aware he's a fish-out-of-water camping out on a cold Canadian rainforest-covered island. His subtle (and often very funny) observations about American, Canadian, Hungarian, and Soviet culture are hard to categorize. He's scathingly critical of consumerism, materialism, and American individualism, but simultaneously detests the naive revolutionary fervour of the Communists. He laments the uprooting of the modern man's mind from the civilization that shaped it, and offers a criticism of history and progress from a thousand-year view. The perspectives Faludy offers us are unusual, but simultaneously new and ancient; they feel like a breath of fresh air in a political climate where people seem uncritically committed to their ideologies of choice.
Despite nuanced and unusual critiques of modern life, Faludy writes in a clean, colourful, easy prose. Take your time with it—the book is digestable, but packed with juicy ideas. It rewards a slow, contemplative read. This short book is a joy, and will leave you both laughing and thinking.
Faludy is an old-world gentleman. He's aware he's a fish-out-of-water camping out on a cold Canadian rainforest-covered island. His subtle (and often very funny) observations about American, Canadian, Hungarian, and Soviet culture are hard to categorize. He's scathingly critical of consumerism, materialism, and American individualism, but simultaneously detests the naive revolutionary fervour of the Communists. He laments the uprooting of the modern man's mind from the civilization that shaped it, and offers a criticism of history and progress from a thousand-year view. The perspectives Faludy offers us are unusual, but simultaneously new and ancient; they feel like a breath of fresh air in a political climate where people seem uncritically committed to their ideologies of choice.
Despite nuanced and unusual critiques of modern life, Faludy writes in a clean, colourful, easy prose. Take your time with it—the book is digestable, but packed with juicy ideas. It rewards a slow, contemplative read. This short book is a joy, and will leave you both laughing and thinking.
August 10, 2008
Notes from the Rainforest is a journal of Gyorgy Faludy's thoughts while living in the Vancouver Forest in BC Canada.
The greatest gripe with this book is that it sadly contains none of Faludy's elegant poems.
However it makes up for this fact with an ample amount of wit applied to a wide array of topics from art, poetry, society and even, to his dismay, philosophy.
It provides a, not open nor closed, window to the mind and thoughts of a poet and his personal life and is humbling.
The greatest gripe with this book is that it sadly contains none of Faludy's elegant poems.
However it makes up for this fact with an ample amount of wit applied to a wide array of topics from art, poetry, society and even, to his dismay, philosophy.
It provides a, not open nor closed, window to the mind and thoughts of a poet and his personal life and is humbling.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews