J. A. Baker (1) (1926–1987)

J.A. Baker’s The Peregrine is a difficult bastard to review. The content is monotonous, dense and at times overwhelmingly pedantic. It calls for a reading experience that is excruciating slow, with each diary entry requiring multiple sweeps to fully substantiate the images Baker weaves together. Brian Eno’s album Ambient 4 is an absolute must for background music, and reading out loud is preferable (while gesticulating excessively and animating your voice with some truly Shakespearean heft and gusto - take up as much space as possible and strut the stage of your bedroom like Orson Welles). You’ll have to push yourself to get to the end, but once you’ve surveyed the landscape you can easily come back and give each passage the necessary closer scrutiny it cries out for. Also, make sure not to watch Herzog talk about it (of course the paradox is you’ll have to watch Herzog talk about it if you want to read the bloody thing in the first place, I’m fairly certain that the majority of this book’s contemporary audience was introduced to it through him) because he reads out all of the best passages - once you get to the places he has already read you’ll internally don his Bavarian breathlessness and feel like you are merely regurgitating already conquered/mastered flights of fancy.… (plus d'informations)

The Peregrine, published in 1967, has become something of a cult classic among aficionados of nature writing. The book follows the author’s intensely personal observations of a pair of Peregrin hawks in eastern England from mid-October to early April. [The observations in question actually took place over a ten year period, but the book telescopes them into a single hunting season for purposes of presentation.]

We learn that the term falcon applies only to the female of the species; her male counterpart, who is considerably smaller, is known as a tercel. All peregrines are fierce, efficient predators whose principal prey consists of other birds, which the hawks usually kill in mid flight. They are extremely fast fliers, equipped with lethal talons and beaks.

The book has remained popular largely because of the high quality of the writing. I opened the book at random, and the first paragraph I encountered contained the following:

“They sailed overhead, three hundred feet up, canting slowly round on still and rigid wings. With feathers fully spread, and dilated with the sustaining air, they were wide, thick-set, cobby-looking hawks. The thin intricate mesh of pale brown and silver-grey markings overlaying the buff surfaces of their underwings contrasted with the vertical mahogany-brown streaks on the deep amber yellow of their chests. Their clenched feet shone against the white tufts of their under-tail coverts. The bunched toes were ridged and knuckled like golden grenades.”

The author is also adept at denominalization (changing a noun into a verb) and other forms of anthimeria, i.e., using one part of speech as another. But there is a problem with this level of description—after 50 pages or so, it begins to cloy; and after 190 pages, it becomes nearly unbearable.

Another problem with the book is that it has virtually no narrative arc. The “story” consists of the author going out each day to observe birds. Sometimes he sees a peregrine, or sees that other birds (described in fine detail) see a peregrine. Sometimes he sees the remains of a bird the peregrine has killed. The next day is the same, as is the next day, and on it goes. Admittedly, there is some (very modest) progression in that as we get deeper and deeper into the book, the author is able to approach the peregrines more and more closely. But nothing else happens.

I would recommend that readers of the book take it a soupcon at a time. Teachers of English or creative writing can analyze randomly chosen passages as examples of virtuoso composition. But for me, the book as a whole is a little too much of a good thing.

(JAB)… (plus d'informations)