Sierra Magazine asked me to describe some of the authors who influenced my new book. Here’s what I came up with:
Years ago, a magazine sent me to Jersey in the Channel Islands to interview Gerald Durrell, the zookeeper and pioneer in the captive breeding of endangered species. Durrell was the author of one of my favorite books, My Family and Other Animals, the classic account of his obsession with wildlife growing up in an eccentric British family on the Mediterranean island of Corfu.
The interview started at 10 a.m., with tumblers of whiskey the size of swimming pools, and Durrell waxing romantic on the possibilities of being reincarnated as a fur seal: “One would swim a thousand miles to marry a female fur seal! They look as if they’ve been made out of molten gold.” In person and in print, Durrell reminded me that it’s possible to write about the natural word and still have fun, and also that the best fun comes from exploring the often quirky connection between people and animals.
In many of my favorite books, the boundaries slip away, as they should, and readers find themselves cast loose in the animal world. The lines of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are still sometimes run through my head as I’m falling asleep: “That night in Max’s room a forest grew and grew and grew until his ceiling hung with vines and the walls became the world all around.” A similar thrill of crossing over also animates T.H. White’s The Sword and The Stone, where Merlin turns a boy named Wart into a fish and then a bird to give him the wisdom he will need to become King Arthur.
White also introduces modern readers to the fanciful creatures that delighted the medieval imagination (and mine) in The Book of Beasts, his translation of a twelfth-century bestiary. The bison-like bonnacon, for instance, had the magical power to escape predators with a three-acre fart that set trees on fire. Read the rest of this entry »
