It Is A Good, Healthy Frame Of Mind To
Be In; But It, No More Than The Other Type, Can Produce Books
That Leave On The Minds Of The General Public Any Impression Of A
Country In Relation To A Real Human Being.
As a matter of fact, the same trouble is at the bottom of both
failures.
The adventure writer, half unconsciously perhaps, has
been too much occupied play-acting himself into half-forgotten
boyhood heroics. The more modest man, with even more
self-consciousness, has been thinking of how he is going to
appear in the eyes of the expert. Both have thought of themselves
before their work. This aspect of the matter would probably
vastly astonish the modest writer.
If, then, one is to formulate an ideal toward which to write, he
might express it exactly in terms of man and environment. Those
readers desiring sheer exploration can get it in any library:
those in search of sheer romantic adventure can purchase plenty
of it at any book-stall. But the majority want something
different from either of these. They want, first of all, to know
what the country is like-not in vague and grandiose "word
paintings," nor in strange and foreign sounding words and
phrases, but in comparison with something they know. What is it
nearest like-Arizona? Surrey? Upper New York? Canada? Mexico? Or
is it totally different from anything, as is the Grand Canyon?
When you look out from your camp-any one camp-how far do you
see, and what do you see?-mountains in the distance, or a screen
of vines or bamboo near hand, or what? When you get up in the
morning, what is the first thing to do? What does a rhino look
like, where he lives, and what did you do the first time one came
at you? I don't want you to tell me as though I were either an
old hunter or an admiring audience, or as though you were afraid
somebody might think you were making too much of the matter. I
want to know how you REALLY felt. Were you scared or nervous? or
did you become cool? Tell me frankly just how it was, so I can
see the thing as happening to a common everyday human being.
Then, even at second-hand and at ten thousand miles distance, I
can enjoy it actually, humanly, even though vicariously,
speculating a bit over my pipe as to how I would have liked it
myself.
Obviously, to write such a book the author must at the same time
sink his ego and exhibit frankly his personality. The paradox in
this is only apparent. He must forget either to strut or to blush
with diffidence. Neither audience should be forgotten, and neither
should be exclusively addressed. Never should he lose sight of
the wholesome fact that old hunters are to read and to weigh;
never should he for a moment slip into the belief that he is
justified in addressing the expert alone.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 3 of 189
Words from 1024 to 1531
of 97210
