Seeking to be ``free to explore the universe within,'' free- lance writer Modzelewski (Sports Illustrated, Outside, etc.) spent 18 months on an islet near Vancouver Island. Modzelewski's sojourn on Swanson Island was inspired in part by his admiration for Zen masters and mountain men such as Jeremiah Johnson. He sought hardships away from people, cities, ski resorts, and college, because ``sometimes you have to lower your standard of living to reach a higher level.'' The owner of the island is Will Malloff, a ``mechanical wizard and woodworker extraordinaire'' as well as a ``healer'' who goes off alone to the woods in an attempt to heal his own lung cancer. Malloff is a fascinating characteronly not as the pure mountain man/mystic of Modzelewski's fantasy, but as a realistic bridge between modern ``civilization'' and romantic notions of getting ``back to nature.'' Some of his working tools, axes and scythes, a few found, others made or purchased, are to Modzelewski ``objets d`art''; it's no accident, Modzelewski notes, that the older tools work best, doing ``minimum damage to the earth and keeping you strong in the process.'' The author's contacts with wildlife belie his underdeveloped, perhaps naive belief in a mystical universe: an injured bald eagle he rescued and nursed, died. When, around the same time, a feather fell from the sky, he ``accepted it as sacred.'' He delivers a sound, informative natural history of cetaceans, but when a killer whale surfaced, near his skiff, ``I touched the whale; she touched me; and what passed between us changed me forever.'' One can only wonder if it was as good for the whale, too. Modzelewski's scenes of salmon fishing, profiles of local characters, observations on a giant octopus, explorations of other islands are solidly wrought. A kind of New Age natural history, hokey but engrossing. (Illustrationsnot seen.)
Pub Date: May 22, 1991
ISBN: 0-06-016533-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1991
The book is not entirely negative; final chapters indicate roads of reversal, before it is too late!
It should come as no surprise that the gifted author of The Sea Around Usand its successors can take another branch of science—that phase of biology indicated by the term ecology—and bring it so sharply into focus that any intelligent layman can understand what she is talking about.
Understand, yes, and shudder, for she has drawn a living portrait of what is happening to this balance nature has decreed in the science of life—and what man is doing (and has done) to destroy it and create a science of death. Death to our birds, to fish, to wild creatures of the woods—and, to a degree as yet undetermined, to man himself. World War II hastened the program by releasing lethal chemicals for destruction of insects that threatened man’s health and comfort, vegetation that needed quick disposal. The war against insects had been under way before, but the methods were relatively harmless to other than the insects under attack; the products non-chemical, sometimes even introduction of other insects, enemies of the ones under attack. But with chemicals—increasingly stronger, more potent, more varied, more dangerous—new chain reactions have set in. And ironically, the insects are winning the war, setting up immunities, and re-emerging, their natural enemies destroyed. The peril does not stop here. Waters, even to the underground water tables, are contaminated; soils are poisoned. The birds consume the poisons in their insect and earthworm diet; the cattle, in their fodder; the fish, in the waters and the food those waters provide. And humans? They drink the milk, eat the vegetables, the fish, the poultry. There is enough evidence to point to the far-reaching effects; but this is only the beginning,—in cancer, in liver disorders, in radiation perils…This is the horrifying story. It needed to be told—and by a scientist with a rare gift of communication and an overwhelming sense of responsibility. Already the articles taken from the book for publication in The New Yorkerare being widely discussed. Book-of-the-Month distribution in October will spread the message yet more widely.
The book is not entirely negative; final chapters indicate roads of reversal, before it is too late!Pub Date: Sept. 27, 1962
ISBN: 061825305X
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1962
APPRECIATIONS
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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