which the simple satisfactions of life on a small islandâfamily, fishing, feasts and musicâare sufficient.
The cruel twist of Tahiti is that a constrained worldview is not just sufficient for life on a tropical island; it is also necessary for long-term contentment. And, as I was to discover many years later, the consequences of a Westernerâs inability to accept the boundaries of island life could be far more ugly than Pacific paralysis.
During that first trip I did meet one man who managed to pull off the trick of living in a place where nothing matters. Ed Ehrich, a potbellied gray-haired American expatriate, was in his late sixties in 1971. When I met him, he lived with his Tahitian vahine in a self-designed meld of airy Polynesian and Cape Cod styles on a point in the Papara district, then quite a ways removed from the bustle of Papeete. After dropping out of the Yale class of 1927, Ehrich had lived in Greenwich Village for a year (where he roomed with a young vaudevillian named Archie Leach, later to gain fame as Cary Grant) before taking up a short career in broadcasting. He eventually realized that he didnât have any particular ambitions and did not want to work that hard, so in 1950 he set off for the one place that he imagined would suit him.
âAll thatâs necessary for an American to be happy in Tahiti,â he told me in 1971, âis that he be preternaturally lazy.â Apparently Ehrich had strolled that walk for two decades, professing to have done nothing other than build a place to live, tend his garden, and read. The reading helped maintain his wry pedantry. Ehrich told me that a few years before my visit a Yale undergraduate had dug his name out of an alumni register and had contacted him in the hopes of securing an invitation to come visit. (Apparently Jeff Stookey and I were part of a long line of Yalies who had a thing for the South Seas.) In his letter the young man wrote, âIâve always had a certain amount of fascination for the South Pacific,â to which Ehrich promptly replied that his grammar suggested that the South Pacific had always been fascinated with him, and Ehrich doubted that this was the case. What a comedown Ehrichâs reply must have been for the hapless undergrads whose dreams of escape were probably fired by the hope of escaping precisely this kind of nitpicking.
Among the American expatriates, Ehrich was famously hermetic. One very social hostess remarked to me with unintended irony, âI just donât understand why Ed doesnât come into town. Some people come to Tahiti and just cut themselves off.â But what worked for Ehrich didnât work for most Americans, who couldnât suppress their characteristic restless knee syndrome. They started businesses, built hotels, took on hobbies, or became drunksâsometimes all of the above.
One American I ran into, Jean Jacques Laurent, had his own solution to dealing with the confines of the island. To break what he called âthe monotony of the climate,â he would go off on expeditions each year to collect artifacts from Polynesia and Melanesia. His Tahitian-style thatch-roofed fare was festooned with totems, charms, masks, shields and skulls. The gods must have found it a very confusing place. When I joined him for dinner one night, he recalled a bartering trip in New Guinea during which he had pointed to a weathered old mask in the corner of a tent and asked in pidgin, âHow much?â The mask turned out to be the chiefâs very much living grandmother, and the chief promptly offered to sell her to Laurent for $20.
When Ed Ehrich first arrived in Tahiti, horses and buggies plied the streets of Papeete. By 1971 that Tahiti no longer existed, though after I got over the shock of traffic jams in Papeete, it was possible to see if not partake in the naïve ebullience of the place. I spent the first few days in the Hotel Stuart, a dump back then, but a
The cruel twist of Tahiti is that a constrained worldview is not just sufficient for life on a tropical island; it is also necessary for long-term contentment. And, as I was to discover many years later, the consequences of a Westernerâs inability to accept the boundaries of island life could be far more ugly than Pacific paralysis.
During that first trip I did meet one man who managed to pull off the trick of living in a place where nothing matters. Ed Ehrich, a potbellied gray-haired American expatriate, was in his late sixties in 1971. When I met him, he lived with his Tahitian vahine in a self-designed meld of airy Polynesian and Cape Cod styles on a point in the Papara district, then quite a ways removed from the bustle of Papeete. After dropping out of the Yale class of 1927, Ehrich had lived in Greenwich Village for a year (where he roomed with a young vaudevillian named Archie Leach, later to gain fame as Cary Grant) before taking up a short career in broadcasting. He eventually realized that he didnât have any particular ambitions and did not want to work that hard, so in 1950 he set off for the one place that he imagined would suit him.
âAll thatâs necessary for an American to be happy in Tahiti,â he told me in 1971, âis that he be preternaturally lazy.â Apparently Ehrich had strolled that walk for two decades, professing to have done nothing other than build a place to live, tend his garden, and read. The reading helped maintain his wry pedantry. Ehrich told me that a few years before my visit a Yale undergraduate had dug his name out of an alumni register and had contacted him in the hopes of securing an invitation to come visit. (Apparently Jeff Stookey and I were part of a long line of Yalies who had a thing for the South Seas.) In his letter the young man wrote, âIâve always had a certain amount of fascination for the South Pacific,â to which Ehrich promptly replied that his grammar suggested that the South Pacific had always been fascinated with him, and Ehrich doubted that this was the case. What a comedown Ehrichâs reply must have been for the hapless undergrads whose dreams of escape were probably fired by the hope of escaping precisely this kind of nitpicking.
Among the American expatriates, Ehrich was famously hermetic. One very social hostess remarked to me with unintended irony, âI just donât understand why Ed doesnât come into town. Some people come to Tahiti and just cut themselves off.â But what worked for Ehrich didnât work for most Americans, who couldnât suppress their characteristic restless knee syndrome. They started businesses, built hotels, took on hobbies, or became drunksâsometimes all of the above.
One American I ran into, Jean Jacques Laurent, had his own solution to dealing with the confines of the island. To break what he called âthe monotony of the climate,â he would go off on expeditions each year to collect artifacts from Polynesia and Melanesia. His Tahitian-style thatch-roofed fare was festooned with totems, charms, masks, shields and skulls. The gods must have found it a very confusing place. When I joined him for dinner one night, he recalled a bartering trip in New Guinea during which he had pointed to a weathered old mask in the corner of a tent and asked in pidgin, âHow much?â The mask turned out to be the chiefâs very much living grandmother, and the chief promptly offered to sell her to Laurent for $20.
When Ed Ehrich first arrived in Tahiti, horses and buggies plied the streets of Papeete. By 1971 that Tahiti no longer existed, though after I got over the shock of traffic jams in Papeete, it was possible to see if not partake in the naïve ebullience of the place. I spent the first few days in the Hotel Stuart, a dump back then, but a
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