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Books : The Wild Places
Rating: 
- tarnelogue
It's modish, of course, part of a current movement, and self-consciously "beautifully written" in that creative-writing-school, hothouse-lexis sort of way. But is there any real connection here, any passion and experiential richness? Or are we just being asked to admire the imposition of a writing scheme upon a subject-area about which, if we're to take his finally consigning "The Wild Places" complacently and uncaringly to a kind of post-apocalyptic Ballard-world, the author appears ultimately to care very little? Also, is there not something terribly deja vu and derivative here? All this strip-and-dip travelogue around the tarns points up the heavy indebtedness to Roger Deakin, whose more amiable and less showy book Waterlog appears to provide the model for this one as Schama's Landscape and Memory did for Macfarlane's earlier - and I think much better - Mountains of the Mind? I think Kathleen Jamie got it exactly right in her long and highly critical TLS review - this is stylish writing, but from outside, from a male and Establishment and neo-colonialist perspective. And it is surely too indebted to too many earlier sources to count as a significant and original contribution to British outdoor literature.
Rating:
- Inspirational
An enormously evocative work. MacFarlane is a deeply sensitive writer, and manages to maintain a intense creative tension between wilderness and civilisation. If you are into the wilderness and outdoors, and have ever struggled to put into words what it is, and why you do it. Then this book is for you.
Rating: - A superb evocation of wildness
This is a wonderful book, and beautifully written. It reads like poetry. The only book I can compare it to is the little gem of a book written by Nan Shepherd about the Cairngorm Mountains and published in 1977 - The Living Mountain. Sadly this seems to be out of print, which is tragic as it deserves to be a classic and is the nearest thing to poetry in prose I have ever read. Nan Shepherd was Professor of English at Aberdeen University and I met her when I was working there in the seventies. I fell in love with the Cairngorms, as she did, and spent many days walking in them and camping alone in the hills. I love their harsh grandeur and the sense of space and light and hugeness, the pure air, the white mountain hares, all the wildlife which you see so much better alone, and the pure water which tastes like light. If you can get a copy, read it! Robert Macfarlane captures the same sense of wonder at wildness. We need wildness, and it would be tragic if we came to treat the few remaining wild places as playgrounds for townies to exert their machismo and to show their ability to conquer and to dominate. The wild is food for the soul, and we destroy it at our peril.We must learn to live with it, not subdue it.
Rating:
- Disappointing...
I settled down with this book, expecting an enjoyable read. It should have been just my thing: wild places, the great outdoors, etc. But after an interesting digression about maps, in the first few pages, it was all downhill. Robert Macfarlane is po-faced and portentious; he takes himself very seriously indeed. His "honeyed prose" (London Review of Books) is actually rather turgid. Worst of all, I didn't see the landscape through his eyes; even as he is describing wild places, the cumulative effect is oddly claustrophobic. Instead of firing me to to go and see the places he visited, I just got more and more irritated.
Rating: - Oh for God's sake!
It woud be churlish to say that Robert Macfarlane's writing is not beautifully crafted and I wish I had his vocabulary and skill with words, but that's about as far as it goes. Much of this book seems to me to be pompous and smug. I get the impression that landsacape is a stage that Macfarlane uses to show how clever and sensitive he is. Most of the chapters have a small percentage about the so called wild place and a huge amount of pseudo intellectual background. Why he can't he just go to these places without the need to read forty books beforehand and then tell us all about them? There's also this slightly sanctimonious and quasi spiritual tone throughout - very hard to put my finger on, but it irritates me - it reminds of the writing that fills the pages of Resurgance magazine; all rainbows and wonder. I just knew that at some point he'd talk about wildness in miniature - I could feel it coming - and sure enough he looks into a gryke... Doesn't he ever just want to say: 'For God's sake Roger (Deakin), stop swimming in your darn moat and do something less pretentious instead.'
- tarnelogueIt's modish, of course, part of a current movement, and self-consciously "beautifully written" in that creative-writing-school, hothouse-lexis sort of way. But is there any real connection here, any passion and experiential richness? Or are we just being asked to admire the imposition of a writing scheme upon a subject-area about which, if we're to take his finally consigning "The Wild Places" complacently and uncaringly to a kind of post-apocalyptic Ballard-world, the author appears ultimately to care very little? Also, is there not something terribly deja vu and derivative here? All this strip-and-dip travelogue around the tarns points up the heavy indebtedness to Roger Deakin, whose more amiable and less showy book Waterlog appears to provide the model for this one as Schama's Landscape and Memory did for Macfarlane's earlier - and I think much better - Mountains of the Mind? I think Kathleen Jamie got it exactly right in her long and highly critical TLS review - this is stylish writing, but from outside, from a male and Establishment and neo-colonialist perspective. And it is surely too indebted to too many earlier sources to count as a significant and original contribution to British outdoor literature.
Rating:
- InspirationalAn enormously evocative work. MacFarlane is a deeply sensitive writer, and manages to maintain a intense creative tension between wilderness and civilisation. If you are into the wilderness and outdoors, and have ever struggled to put into words what it is, and why you do it. Then this book is for you.
Rating:
- A superb evocation of wildnessThis is a wonderful book, and beautifully written. It reads like poetry. The only book I can compare it to is the little gem of a book written by Nan Shepherd about the Cairngorm Mountains and published in 1977 - The Living Mountain. Sadly this seems to be out of print, which is tragic as it deserves to be a classic and is the nearest thing to poetry in prose I have ever read. Nan Shepherd was Professor of English at Aberdeen University and I met her when I was working there in the seventies. I fell in love with the Cairngorms, as she did, and spent many days walking in them and camping alone in the hills. I love their harsh grandeur and the sense of space and light and hugeness, the pure air, the white mountain hares, all the wildlife which you see so much better alone, and the pure water which tastes like light. If you can get a copy, read it! Robert Macfarlane captures the same sense of wonder at wildness. We need wildness, and it would be tragic if we came to treat the few remaining wild places as playgrounds for townies to exert their machismo and to show their ability to conquer and to dominate. The wild is food for the soul, and we destroy it at our peril.We must learn to live with it, not subdue it.
Rating:
- Disappointing...I settled down with this book, expecting an enjoyable read. It should have been just my thing: wild places, the great outdoors, etc. But after an interesting digression about maps, in the first few pages, it was all downhill. Robert Macfarlane is po-faced and portentious; he takes himself very seriously indeed. His "honeyed prose" (London Review of Books) is actually rather turgid. Worst of all, I didn't see the landscape through his eyes; even as he is describing wild places, the cumulative effect is oddly claustrophobic. Instead of firing me to to go and see the places he visited, I just got more and more irritated.
Rating:
- Oh for God's sake!It woud be churlish to say that Robert Macfarlane's writing is not beautifully crafted and I wish I had his vocabulary and skill with words, but that's about as far as it goes. Much of this book seems to me to be pompous and smug. I get the impression that landsacape is a stage that Macfarlane uses to show how clever and sensitive he is. Most of the chapters have a small percentage about the so called wild place and a huge amount of pseudo intellectual background. Why he can't he just go to these places without the need to read forty books beforehand and then tell us all about them? There's also this slightly sanctimonious and quasi spiritual tone throughout - very hard to put my finger on, but it irritates me - it reminds of the writing that fills the pages of Resurgance magazine; all rainbows and wonder. I just knew that at some point he'd talk about wildness in miniature - I could feel it coming - and sure enough he looks into a gryke... Doesn't he ever just want to say: 'For God's sake Roger (Deakin), stop swimming in your darn moat and do something less pretentious instead.'