by Lyall Watson ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2001
Much more evocatively than any zoologist has ever managed, Watson makes the elephant a force of nature, accessible even to...
Naturalist Watson (Dark Nature, 1996, etc.) recounts his experiences among the elephants of southern Africa with wonderful freshness and enthusiasm, even though some of the most important encounters depicted here took place decades ago.
Elephants haven't changed a whole lot since their distant ancestors the Primelephas evolved from the gomphotheres (“the beasts that are bolted together”) during the Pliocene Period. That may, suggests Watson, explain their fascination for humans; they are literally out of time. Elephants have become symbols of might and memory, of harmony, patience, power, and compassion. But they also have an ambivalent relationship with humans: they are not cooed over, but respected; they keep their distance, they provoke fear and awe; but they have been hunted, harried, and fenced nearly out of existence. While humans’ deplorable treatment of the elephant occupies Watson, he is more concerned with the creature's otherworldly existence on the fringes of our experience, the host of intuitive responses it triggers in us when in the wild we feel its reverberant presence, even (perhaps especially) at times we can't see it. Three major episodes frame the study: a superbly rendered account of 12-year-old Lyall and his friends spending some days on the beach with a Khoi man and a spectral white elephant; his immersion a decade later in the elephants' environment (where he had some close encounters with a raging bull) under the guidance of an old hand at tracking; and his use as a mature author/researcher of insights gained during his time with the elephants in books he has written on evil and the paranormal.
Much more evocatively than any zoologist has ever managed, Watson makes the elephant a force of nature, accessible even to the reader with no personal exposure to the mighty creature. (Line drawings)Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-393-05117-X
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2002
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More by Lyall Watson
BOOK REVIEW
by Lyall Watson
by Patrik Svensson translated by Agnes Broomé ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2020
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.
An account of the mysterious life of eels that also serves as a meditation on consciousness, faith, time, light and darkness, and life and death.
In addition to an intriguing natural history, Swedish journalist Svensson includes a highly personal account of his relationship with his father. The author alternates eel-focused chapters with those about his father, a man obsessed with fishing for this elusive creature. “I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream,” he writes. “I can’t remember us speaking at all….Because we were in…a place whose nature was best enjoyed in silence.” Throughout, Svensson, whose beat is not biology but art and culture, fills his account with people: Aristotle, who thought eels emerged live from mud, “like a slithering, enigmatic miracle”; Freud, who as a teenage biologist spent months in Trieste, Italy, peering through a microscope searching vainly for eel testes; Johannes Schmidt, who for two decades tracked thousands of eels, looking for their breeding grounds. After recounting the details of the eel life cycle, the author turns to the eel in literature—e.g., in the Bible, Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind, and Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum—and history. He notes that the Puritans would likely not have survived without eels, and he explores Sweden’s “eel coast” (what it once was and how it has changed), how eel fishing became embroiled in the Northern Irish conflict, and the importance of eel fishing to the Basque separatist movement. The apparent return to life of a dead eel leads Svensson to a consideration of faith and the inherent message of miracles. He warns that if we are to save this fascinating creature from extinction, we must continue to study it. His book is a highly readable place to begin learning.
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-296881-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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by Brian Fies illustrated by Brian Fies ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2019
Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.
A new life and book arise from the ashes of a devastating California wildfire.
These days, it seems the fires will never end. They wreaked destruction over central California in the latter months of 2018, dominating headlines for weeks, barely a year after Fies (Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?, 2009) lost nearly everything to the fires that raged through Northern California. The result is a vividly journalistic graphic narrative of resilience in the face of tragedy, an account of recent history that seems timely as ever. “A two-story house full of our lives was a two-foot heap of dead smoking ash,” writes the author about his first return to survey the damage. The matter-of-fact tone of the reportage makes some of the flights of creative imagination seem more extraordinary—particularly a nihilistic, two-page centerpiece of a psychological solar system in which “the fire is our black hole,” and “some veer too near and are drawn into despair, depression, divorce, even suicide,” while “others are gravitationally flung entirely out of our solar system to other cities or states, and never seen again.” Yet the stories that dominate the narrative are those of the survivors, who were part of the community and would be part of whatever community would be built to take its place across the charred landscape. Interspersed with the author’s own account are those from others, many retirees, some suffering from physical or mental afflictions. Each is rendered in a couple pages of text except one from a fellow cartoonist, who draws his own. The project began with an online comic when Fies did the only thing he could as his life was reduced to ash and rubble. More than 3 million readers saw it; this expanded version will hopefully extend its reach.
Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3585-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Abrams ComicArts
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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