Woman of the World

...This was especially true of guerrillas who, "being anti-American and generally pro-Marxist, hated American men...

...the time she has since had for self-assessment fortuitously resulted in this delightful account of her life so far—which, at forty-seven, is by no means over...

...Geyer s perceptive and discreet revelations about herself and her own relationships are largely subordinate to the drama of her remarkable political encounters and to astute observations and lively descriptions of her unparalleled adventures...

...Ann Morrissett Davidon is a free-lance writer and peace activist...

...What's more, if you were straight and honest, they would be extremely honorable about you to prove themselves honorable men in contrast to the capitalist libertines...

...Though she met numerous obstacles as a woman in a "man's field," and as a fledgling among correspondents often old enough to be her father, she admits that being a woman helped her do her work...

...Like the good reporter she is, Geyer plunges us immediately into a vivid description of a grueling mountain trek she took with Guatemalan guerrillas, risking discovery or death at the hands of government security forces backed by U . S . advisers...

...The overriding responsibility to elict information justifies the excitement of the hunt, of being the first to know, of travel to exotic places, and of being part of the "aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky" (a quote from E . M . Forster which she finds especially apt for the comrades of her profession...

...She became a syndicated columnist and continues her frequent sorties abroad...

...For her, Chile's hopes for a better future had already been crushed by the advent of a Marxist president...

...Woman of the World BUYING THE NIGHT FLIGHT by Ge?rgie Anne Geyer Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence...

...by Ann Morrissett Davidon After a peripatetic decade as a foreign correspondent seeking interviews with the movers and shakers and victims of the world's recent wars and revolutions, Ge?rgie Anne Geyer is now the one to be sought after, interviewed, and feted...

...There is no clear suggestion that the inequities of society, combined with militaristic totalitarianism—of Left or Right— may be the main problem...

...Fellow correspondents inevitably told her that she had "all the advantages" as a woman...

...If I have given the impression that this is a tortured tract filled with self-analysis, let me dispel it quickly...

...Government, especially in Latin America...

...Non-American counterparts did not always understand this dividing line...

...Frankly," she says of this delusion, "I just couldn't picture waking up at three in the morning with some stranger lying next to me and saying, 'Eh, Che, mi amor, tell me where your missiles are.' Men apparently think that's the way it's done...

...Only when it would not compromise the integrity of her work would she allow some friendships to become deeper...

...You're not playing games, you're playing with temperaments . . . all revolutionary collegiality one moment and calculated savagery the next...

...Yet finally she felt the need of roots and settled into a Washington apartment...

...Her earlier books were on political developments in the countries where she traveled...

...Throughout her career she finds herself engaged in this dual struggle, as a journalist trying to gain insights into the world's conflicts and leaders, and as a woman trying to make her way in a tough male-run world without losing the empathetic "feminine" qualities she wants that world to appreciate...

...While incensed by rigid regimes of the Right, she seems to accept the dichotomy of the "free world" (lumped into which are democracy, capitalism, and rightist dictatorships) versus the insidious totalitarianism she equates with Marxism...

...The revulsion she developed toward revolutionary zeal is somewhat muted by her disapproval of the blind blundering and sometimes cynically manipulative policies of the U.S...

...This was only a precursor of Geyer's later daring ventures into the capitals and remote parts of Latin America, the Soviet Union, and the Middle East in search of clues that could reveal what people were really feeling and thinking behind the official facades, government handouts, diplomatic evasions, and bureaucratic red tape...

...And well she deserves it...

...Elsewhere, as she sets off to the Soviet Union, she calls it "the dialectic of our era between democracy and totalitarianism...

...Her support of both Israeli and Palestinian rights to a secure homeland has brought her friendly, if somewhat wary, access to important figures of both sides (except Begin, whose policies she strongly believes are leading Israel to its own destruction...

...Scrupulous about separating her personal life from her profession, she did find, however, that when she could arrange to meet male leaders in a relaxed atmosphere, they were much more inclined to open up to a woman correspondent than to a man...

...Clearly this changed with time, and on the whole her relations with male colleagues seem to have been remarkably equitable...

...My own quarrel, if it could be called that, is with her phrasing, or perception, of what she sees as th...

...The chapter in which Geyer describes a sexual attack—an actual beating—by a Soviet Georgian television commentator is certainly one of the most vivid and harrowing in Buying the Night Flight...

...Being a journalist entails sacrifices, especially for a woman...

...She explores her ambivalent feelings of guilt and outrage, finding ingrained within her the old taboos against women's intrusion into a man's world and the feeling that any sexual assault by a man must somehow be the woman's fault...

...In describing the troubling aspects of Salvador Allende in Chile before his overthrow and death, she makes no mention of the U . S . role in that overthrow...

...While she could not usually express them in her journalistic reports, she does so in Buying the Night Flight and in her syndicated columns...

...She polished her guileless approach while pursuing inaccessible guerrilla leaders: "You make the contact, you behave co?rectly, you let yourself be known, you are as honest as humanly possible if only because the slightest suggestion of guile will immediately destroy the project and put you in danger, and you persist without giving the impression that you are nervously or abnormally over-eager...

...Geyer's honesty, integrity, and humor will no doubt preserve her from the smothering embraces of any oppressive ideology or tyrant, personal or political...

...It is this aspect of her work that she regards as the correspondent's sacred duty...

...Geyer's objective reporting did not preclude formation of certain personal opinions...

...two major developments" in the world, Marxism versus democracy...

...Describing her admiration for her stern, scrupulously honest father, she recognizes that the love she sought to earn from him by hard work she also expected from other males...

...In Buying the Night Flight she has written an exuberant account of those exciting years that is riveting yet relaxed, lighthearted and thought-provoking...

...But such "advantage" was counterbalanced by some less pleasant aspects of life as a woman correspondent: the jealousy of male colleagues, and the real dangers of being physically vulnerable...

...Living and working "through most of the post-World War II new cycles of violence . . . often in the most disturbing and incredible first-hand manner," she found that she was also living her own parallel revolution as a woman...

...Her investigative method, like her writing, is both forthright and discreet, drawing out any honest and confessional impulses within her interviewees...

...It took me a long, painful time," she writes, "to figure out why accomplishments didn't bring love from other men, either, but instead only competition, resentment, and rage of a new sort...

...People in "out" positions, she found, generally prefer women ("at least American women...

...Her conversations with Sadat, Arafat, Hussein, Khomeini, Iraq's elusive Saddam, and others in the Middle East, and with Castro in Cuba, Regis Debray in a Bolivian prison, and guerrillas in the jungles of Central America, are almost all models of sensitive probing that bring forth new insights...

...Wistfully Geyer acknowledges that her love for personal freedom and her profession outweighed the security of a home, husband, and family...