Readers familiar with Cape Cod will deepen their view of the place by following Finch’s pages; those who do not know it will...
Lyrical essays on place from a longtime resident of the Massachusetts shore.
Finch, coeditor of the Norton Book of Nature Writing, has the nature-essay form down cold. He observes some quotidian fact of life, elaborates on it for a few pages, and closes with a sententious moral. So it is with the title essay, in which Finch describes the assassination of a yellow hornet by a spider that had hidden itself carefully away in a corner of its study; the spider, he writes, “was almost solicitous, as if ministering to the stricken hornet, as carefully and as kindly as possible ending its struggles and its agony.” The moral Finch draws is this: “There is only the stillness of an eternal present and the silent architecture of perfectly strung possibilities.” Finch repeats the formula in 43 other short pieces, all crafted at magazine-filler or radio-spot length: here he considers the behavior of migratory whales (the former mainstay of the Cape Cod economy), there he writes of ancient trees, wily fish, and passing birds. Unlike some practitioners of the nature-essay form, Finch even finds room in nature for humans (albeit in a wary, Robert Frost-ish way). For humans, he observes, are as responsible as the winds and tides for shaping places like Cape Cod, manifesting themselves in “a well-ploughed field, a well-tended garden, colorful flower-boxes, planted trees, drained bogs and swamps, and barn full of hay and a woodshed full of stove logs.” Finch is meditative and celebratory, and he almost always avoids the genre’s traps—chief among them sentimentality and self-indulgence.
Readers familiar with Cape Cod will deepen their view of the place by following Finch’s pages; those who do not know it will likely want to have a look for themselves.Pub Date: May 15, 2000
ISBN: 1-58243-049-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The latest on human evolution from our man at New York City's American Museum of Natural History (Dept. of Invertebrates), who views the future with alarm. We have absorbed the Genesis myth, Eldredge (Reinventing Darwin, p. 356, etc.) declares, accepting our God-given role as having ``dominion . . . over every creeping thing.'' Thus, we stand above and apart from nature, which we continue to exploit. The rise of agriculture and cultural traditions allowed us to transcend local ecosystems so that we stand today 5.7 billion strong and growing, a global species in danger of planetary and self- destruction. Not good. Not new, either. Eldredge, as impassioned and articulate as he is, echoes much of what the Ehrlichs, E.O. Wilson, and other biologist-conservationists are saying. Elsewhere there are new wrinkles, and Eldredge is good at reprising the out- of-Africa evolutionary story, emphasizing major weather changes as pivotal goads to evolution. One occurred 2.7 to 2.5 million years ago as East African wetlands changed to dry savannah. That created niches for specialized vegetarian protohuman species and other more generalized, bigger-brained speciesboth descendants of Australopithecus africanus. According to the Eldredge scenario, a second cold pulse around 1.6 million years ago led to a more advanced hominid, Homo ergaster (``work man''), which Eldredge believes was ancestor to the more familiar Homo erectus species, which eventually led to us. In short, Eldredge argues that material culture builds with each successive species and with the ice ages begins to move at a pace that decouples biological from cultural evolution. We can no longer count on natural selection to do its thing because we are no longer living in small, geographically isolated groups. Ergo, we need to forego dominion and embrace sustainable growth, respect all flora and fauna, and practice population control, most likely to come about with the education and empowerment of women. Makes sense, but is anyone outside the members of the choir listening?
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8050-2982-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
On a Columbus Day, over the course of a discursive, 15-mile ramble to Thoreau's grave at Concord, Mass., Mitchell (Living at the End of Time, 1990, etc.) ponders the old roads of the Minutemen on their way to battle and laments the vacuity of the contemporary soul of America. More than the domain of the great naturalist philosopher, Concord, to Mitchell, is the American version of Mecca and Lourdes. Eschewing paved roads, Mitchell and two somewhat otherworldly companions trek along the all but vanished Revolutionary War trails used by the colonials to fight the battle of Concord, ``the point here being to get to Concord in a seventeenth-century landscape.'' As they perambulate through brambles, scout out stream crossings, and throw some of their lunch to growling dogs in a Cerberean encounter, Mitchell considers similar quests (including Ponce de Le¢n's search for the Fountain of Youth), the prevalence throughout history of special places, and pre-European legends of the Gay Head cliffs on Martha's Vineyard. Concord excluded, Mitchell contends that present-day America lacks meaningful pilgrimage sites: ``The white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who forged this country were not given to taking long, ecstatic journeys to spiritual centers'' and the English Puritans eliminated all vestiges of Native American holy places. As the trio nears Concord, most of the account is taken up with the chronology of the 1775 battle with the British, ironically juxtaposed with the story of a war 100 years earlier, for the same site, between the colonists and the Native Americans of the region: In the pantheon of holy places, Concord has long persisted. Like the path the travelers take, this odyssey is not particularly linear; but it is told with humor and a naturalist's eye for the region's flora and fauna (with illustrations by Robert Leverett). A book to be read leisurely and contemplatively.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-201-40672-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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