Bali: A Paradise Created

Sober but quite colorful narrative of the history of the history of Bali. (That is not a typo).Vickers starts out with about 30 somewhat lacklustre pages tackling the topic of how the Balinese themselves recorded their history. He does an admirable job of garnering what details he can from what little must still be in existence of pre-Dutch Balinese historical texts. Then Vickers turns on the heat with his isolation of who it was that "discovered the Balinese breast!" (A European doctor who did plenty of homework)! Much amusement and fun follows, along with profound explorations of the evolution of Bali's image as both a paradise on earth and a land of strange magic and the supernatural... the so-called island of the Gods. Vickers' book really makes the reader aware of how historic and cultural details get lost along the way to progress and prosperity. It is a complex series of actions and decisions that have shaped today's Balinese culture. Vickers shows plenty of sympathy for artists ignored by influential Baliphile Walter Spies (who, possibly more than any other westerner, has shaped the 'look' of what we think of as traditional Balinese arts and crafts). Yet this isn't a treatise from a bleeding heart, and he shows how forces other than western colonialism are as much to blame for that which makes people use the tired exclamation that Bali is not what it used to be.Vickers shows the importance of WHO observes, catalogs, records, and promotes a culture. There is plenty of food for thought about the shortcomings of a plan to make a culture sit in a vaccuum instead of evolve with the ideas of its people.